This is PCIe, not USB. Although if OP does have an unused PCIe slot they didn’t mention in the post, I do agree a second-hand LSI card is by far the most cost-effective way to connect large amounts of SATA/SAS drives. And you get much better performance than USB as a bonus!
Comment on cheapest way to connect several SATA HDs via USB?
artifex@piefed.social 13 hours ago
Buy a cheap LSI card on ebay, they can usually be had for around $15-20. Make sure it’s either in HBA or IT mode, or that there’s a way to put it into that mode. If it’s in HBA/IT mode, you can then just use it like more SATA ports. Buy a pack of LSI-SATA cables (there are two kinds, get the kind that includes the SATA power connector). Then you can put the card inside your computer and the drives anywhere that the cables will reach.
aBundleOfFerrets@sh.itjust.works 12 hours ago
cardbord_box@lemmy.sdf.org 12 hours ago
Computer is too small to have anything put inside it. Has to be external. And it’s a mac so it is very hostile to fiddling around.
artifex@piefed.social 12 hours ago
Ah my mistake. As I’m sure you’ve found you can certainly get USB-SATA adapters. They’ll be $15-20 each, so you’d realistically be better off getting 2 2-drive enclosures since that would be about the same price but much cleaner. I’ve used Sabrent for this for a while and they’re fine. There are occasional usb disconnects so it’s not good for anything mission critical. And never do anything port-powered when connecting drives over usb, always use parts that get their own wall power.
cardbord_box@lemmy.sdf.org 12 hours ago
Do you mean the ones that are sold as drive duplicators? Those were the most affordable per HD of what I found. I don’t really want to have a button that would erase or write over my drive though. That’s asking for trouble. A couple of reviews I read mentioned that the particular devices were really aggressive about power management, and would turn themselves off after 10s or 30s idle. Which sounds very annoying but makes sense if the main thing is to clone drive-to-drive. Not sure if they’re all like that.
Anything? Some of my “portable” type HDDs don’t have external power input. So there must be some situations in which it is feasible?
artifex@piefed.social 12 hours ago
I have one of these. It’s usb 3.0 only which it sounds like is what you have anyway. It’s not part of my NAS, I just use it when I need to quickly look for something on an old drive, but it’s been pretty reliable for me for the last few years and was cheap, so I have no complaints.