External enclosure performance

[jtmsrl]

Hello,

 

Im new into this, I wanted to build a standalone NAS to hold some data and maybe multimedia streaming, after watching some videos I came up with unraid and its ability to split my system into a NAS and a Gaming rig using the same hardware without losing gaming performance.

 

Currently I have a gaming rig (9700k, ITX board on an Ncase M1) but because of my limitations (itx and case) having some extra disks inside would be a problem, so I came up with the idea on using a pcie adapter with a m.2 riser and using a raid card to connect a custom made external enclosure using some mini sas connector (I don’t even know if it’s gonna work).

 

So my question is, given my setup and NAS requirements (2 hdd for data, 1 hdd for parity and 1 ssd for cache), is this possible? am I overthinking this an a usb 3.0 enclosure would do the job? I know usb 3.0 has the 5Gbps limitations, but mini sas has just 1Gbps more (6Gbps if using a raid controller), so I was thinking on using maybe 1 mini sas per 2 hdd.

[trurl]

I recommend not going USB for any of the assigned disks. Though it is officially supported, there are just too many variables to know whether any specific implementation will have issues.

[jtmsrl]

7 minutes ago, trurl said:

I recommend not going USB for any of the assigned disks. Though it is officially supported, there are just too many variables to know whether any specific implementation will have issues.

What do you think about single mini sas at 6Gbps for the 4 drives? will it bottleneck? 

[JorgeB]

38 minutes ago, jtmsrl said:

What do you think about single mini sas at 6Gbps for the 4 drives? will it bottleneck? 

It's a good option, no bottleneck, even if used with 4 SSDs.