Seeking Advice on Homelab Laptop Setup with UNRAID and External HDD Enclosure

[pedrohcmeneses]

Hello everyone,

 

I'm reaching out to this community for advice on an endeavor that is somewhat new to me. A bit about myself: I am a medical doctor with no formal training in server management or IT infrastructure. However, I've always had a passion for technology and computers. It wasn't until the arrival of my first child that I felt the need to set up a homelab for various purposes such as storage, management, and processing of surveillance camera images, media content (movies, series), image and video backups, and for running Home Assistant. Currently, I'm utilizing UNRAID and Home Assistant on separate VM machines in Proxmox.

 

I recently purchased a Yottamaster PS500C3 enclosure with the intention of connecting two WD161KFGX-68AFPN0 16TB HDDs to the USB-C port of my notebook. My notebook, equipped with a GPU and specs I consider quite decent for personal use at home, was not in use, and I wanted to leverage it as a server in my homelab. This setup would mainly handle backup management, and media processing (for courses, movies, series, etc.). As a novice, I thought connecting the Yottamaster enclosure via USB-C (USB3.1 Gen 1 5Gbps I guess) was a good start, despite reading about potential issues with stability, compatibility, and performance on this very forum.

 

My concern arises because I only receive SMART information, temperature, firmware version, etc., correctly from one of the HDDs at any given time, never both simultaneously. UNRAID does not report an error on the other HDD, but these details are simply absent. I'm not using hardware RAID. I've tried repositioning the HDDs in all possible slots within the Yottamaster, trying different USB-C and USB-A ports, and even connecting to a different computer (Mac) without success. I understand that USB-C might not be the ideal connection method, but if this setup is only for backups and not required to be accessed all the time, could it be viable?

 

Additionally, is there any way to modify my notebook to improve the setup, possibly converting a connection for future use via HBA? Please forgive me if my query seems absurd.

 

I should also mention that I am from Brazil, where the cost of computing products has been exceedingly high due to substantial taxes. This has made it challenging to easily acquire or upgrade technology, influencing my decision to work with what I already have.

 

Notebook Specs:

Processor: Intel Core i5-9300H (9th Gen, 4 cores, 8 MB cache, 2.4 GHz up to 4.1 GHz)

RAM: 32 GB DDR4 3200 MHz (2x 16 GB) - not ECC

Storage: 1 TB 5400 RPM SATA III HDD | 2x M.2 PCIe NVMe slots occupied by 1x Samsung V-Nand 970 Evo Plus NVMe M.2 500GB and 1x KingDian M2 NVME 1TB SSD (The HDD and Samsung SSD host a Windows 11 installation not used in the server setup, pending backup before potential removal. The 1TB SSD is utilized for LVM-local in Proxmox)

Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 1650 4 GB GDDR5

Network: Wi-Fi 802.11 ac 2x2 / Bluetooth v5.0 / Gigabit Ethernet

 

I appreciate any guidance or suggestions you may have. Thank you for your time.

Edited March 22 by pedrohcmeneses
I got the response I needed for that part of the text.

[JonathanM]

57 minutes ago, pedrohcmeneses said:

I reached out to UNRAID support about 5 days ago but haven't received a response yet.

If you don't receive an automated response in a few minutes it didn't go through properly, try again.

[JorgeB]

1 hour ago, pedrohcmeneses said:

I'm curious about others' experiences with UNRAID support. Is the lack of response due to my trial status,

Most likely the ticket didn't get created, like mentioned above, make sure you got the automated reply, but note that trial keys cannot be transferred, you can start a new trial with a new flash drive.

[pedrohcmeneses]

Thank you for your fast response! I will try to send it again!