Backup unRAID server - Hard Drive enclosure (internal sata)

[Deeps]

Hey all,

 

This is my first post here so please bear with me.

 

Background:

I essentially have 2 unRAID servers, my main server which is housed in a Fractal Design Meshify 2 XL with loads of hard drive space and my second unRAID system which is a HP t740 Thin Client.

I work in IT and I wanted a local backup (also have cloud backup), hence the second unRAID system which is housed in my garden shed (brick and mortar with insulation), both connected via 10GB switches and the connection between the house and the shed is 20GB for redundancy and load-balancing.

 

Problem:

Given the HP t740 is tiny it has only a single PCIe Gen3 x8 slot in which I have the ASUS XG-C100C 10GB NIC (same as the main unRAID server).

It does however have 2 storage slots, 1x M.2 NVMe and 1x M.2 SATA. I am currently using the NVMe for caching the main array and the SATA for Docker/VMs though I doubt i'll use either on this machine.

 

I tried the ORICO-9528U3 (dual bay 3.5" SATA to USB enclosure) connected to the USB 3.0 port on the HP however it is flakey to say the least, random read and write failures which cause unRAID to disable the parity drive as far as I can tell. Done multiple installs of unRAID, even tried TrueNas Scale (didn't like it), same thing so I am ruling out OS.

The drives were purchased at the same time and have at most 200 power on hours so doubt it's the drives (2x Seagate IronWolf 4TB).

 

Solution/s?:

1. Try another USB hard drive enclosure... (not keen)
2. Remove the M.2 SATA SSD and replace with something like an M.2 SATA to SATA adapter and plug in the hard drives using SATA (powering with some sort of mains to molex/sata adapter) 
3. ?????

 

Sorry for the kinda long first post but not really sure how to proceed.

Thanks in advance!

Edited October 5, 2022 by Deeps

[JorgeB]

11 hours ago, Deeps said:

Remove the M.2 SATA SSD and replace with something like an M.2 SATA to SATA adapter

This would be much better than using USB, assuming that m.2 slot supports PCIe.