March 7, 20233 yr 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
March 8, 20233 yr 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
March 8, 20233 yr Author Yes but is internal drives attached directly to the motherboard somehow superior to attaching external drives via esata?
March 8, 20233 yr 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, 20233 yr by apandey
March 9, 20233 yr 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.
March 9, 20233 yr Author 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
March 9, 20233 yr 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.
March 9, 20233 yr 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
Join the conversation
You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.