Unraid on mini PC with e-sata drives

[rama3124]

Hi, is it possible to use unraid on a mini PC with external esata drives or is this not recommended? I don't have space for a full tower in my apartment and prefer the low power usage of a mini PC. TIA

 

 

 

[apandey]

It should be fine, as long as your hardware works with unraid. You can boot a trial usb on your PC to check out. Unraid runs from memory, so it won't touch your existing drives etc unless you create and start arrays and pools 

[rama3124]

Yes but is internal drives attached directly to the motherboard somehow superior to attaching external drives via esata?

[apandey]

2 hours ago, rama3124 said:

Yes but is internal drives attached directly to the motherboard somehow superior to attaching external drives via esata?

Only in physical sense - basically, you have a risk of yanking the cable a bit more. At interface level, esata is same as sata

 

obviously, what makes them similar also puts higher demands on esata connectivity - cables are shielded, connector is a bit more robust, so in the end physical differences may not matter as long as you don’t manage to disconnect or power off drives while in use

Edited March 8, 2023 by apandey

[JonathanM]

eSATA is fine as long as it's not paired with port multiplication. One drive per eSATA port on the PC works identically as an internal SATA. The issue comes when you try to use a multiple disk enclosure over a single eSATA port.

[rama3124]

So if I have a mini PC and am looking for the easiest way to expand storage while keeping the same PC and ideally similar performance, then I should look at installing an SAS HBA card and then having a SAS to 4 X e-SATA cables extending to an external drive enclosure. Does this make sense or is it crazy? Also how would these external drives be powered? Thanks 

[Frank1940]

5 hours ago, rama3124 said:

then I should look at installing an SAS HBA card and then having a SAS to 4 X e-SATA cables extending to an external drive enclosure. Does this make sense or is it crazy? Also how would these external drives be powered? Thanks 

 

You should be looking first to find a suitable e-SATA enclosure for housing the drives that you want to use.  When you have done that, the answers to most of your questions will be probably be obvious.  

 

You might be better served by looking for a small PC case to hold the number of drives you need rather than this exotic setup you are trying to assemble.  Three 16TB drives in a case would give you a 32Tb parity protected array.  That would be enough storage for over 1000 BluRay quality movies.

[Frank1940]

6 hours ago, Frank1940 said:

You might be better served by looking for a small PC case to hold the number of drives you need

Look here:

 

   https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096FD8WVS/ref=sspa_dk_detail_2?psc=1&pd_rd_i=B096FD8WVS&pd_rd_w=pvEfN&content-id=amzn1.sym.88097cb9-5064-44ef-891b-abfacbc1c44b&pf_rd_p=88097cb9-5064-44ef-891b-abfacbc1c44b&pf_rd_r=ZMEW5AQ5DJBHNE6PJH62&pd_rd_wg=nyUnj&pd_rd_r=f82192ee-7c16-45c3-887c-b081f5bbacd0&s=electronics&sp_csd=d2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWw&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyRDRMTUIzMlJKWTM1JmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwNDkwMzg1MlZFUFdMOFRLUU41SiZlbmNyeXB0ZWRBZElkPUEwMzkwNTQ4VzQ4ODRYNFdYVk8md2lkZ2V0TmFtZT1zcF9kZXRhaWwmYWN0aW9uPWNsaWNrUmVkaXJlY3QmZG9Ob3RMb2dDbGljaz10cnVl