Submitted 7 months ago by helenslunch@feddit.nl to selfhosted@lemmy.world
https://feddit.nl/pictrs/image/ddc6e879-3b01-43c4-855e-2f1df44ecbf0.webp
Trying to squeeze some more storage in my MiniPC. I have questions about these. These use hardward RAID with selectable modes (Individual/JBOD/RAID1/RAID2).
If I use RAID 1 and one of the drives fails, will I know?
If a drive fails, and a slap in a new one, will it internally begin repairing RAID 1 again?
Can I use these as “individual” or JBOD and have 2 separate drives through the same connector, and use something like TrueNAS to software-RAID them?
JBOD relies on an optional SATA extension, which most of your controllers won’t have.
That leaves you with RAID in the controller - which is a bad idea, as you don’t have much control over what is going on, and recovery if it fails will possibly messy.
Then why does it list JBOD?
Because it does JBOD if the controller supports it. Pretty much none of the controllers you’ll find in consumer hardware support that.
Super cool. I didn’t know this existed.
I’m not saying this rudely. This sounds like a “read the manual” moment, since different vendors can have different settings.
Or at least links to the exact one you are looking at.
I couldn’t find any manuals. Thought maybe there was just a “conventional” way that these functioned.
https://www.qnap.com/en/product/qda-a2mar seems to be the one in your image. From the users guide it seems it does everything you listed. The prices I've seen are about 100 € / $ though plus the two SSDs you need, personally I'd invest in external backup instead, that covers more data loss scenarios than this adapter.
If I’m not wrong these are not compatible with nvme? I remember I wanted to buy something like this but I couldn’t find PCIE to SATA, pretty sure I’m wrong but not in the mood to research
This one is SATA, yes.
What I mean is that I’m not sure there are adapters from PCIE the interface nvme drive use to SATA. If I’m not mistaken they don’t work with nvme 4.0
Do not use one with any kind of logic. The mSATA ones are fine because they just passthough
Logic?
As in, hardware RAID is a terrible idea and should never be used. Ever.
With hardware RAID, you are moving your single point of failure from your drive to your RAID controller - when the controller fails, and they fail more often then you would expect - you are fucked, your data is gone, nice try, play again some time. In theory you could swap the controller out, but in practice it’s a coin flip if that will actually work unless you can find exactly the same model controller with exactly the same firmware manufactured in the same production line while the moon was in the same phase and even then your odds are still only 2 in 3.
Do yourself a favour, look at an external disk shelf/DAS/drive enclosure that connects over SAS and do RAID in software. Hardware RAID made sense when CPUs were hewn from granite and had clock rates measures in tens of megahertz so offloading things to dedicated silicon made things faster, but that’s not been the case this century.
Silicon
I cant see these being great if all youre doing is trying to add more storage. For one, raid is already not terribly great, and on some unknown hardware like this, who knows?
If all you needed was storage, youd be better off getting an actual 2.5" drive in the highest capacity you can find, and it will still likely be cheaper thank a bunch of M.2 and perform better too.
Then there’s no redundancy
Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I’ve seen in this thread:
| Fewer Letters | More Letters |
|---|---|
| PCIe | Peripheral Component Interconnect Express |
| RAID | Redundant Array of Independent Disks for mass storage |
| SATA | Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage |
| SSD | Solid State Drive mass storage |
[Thread #660 for this sub, first seen 6th Apr 2024, 21:05] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]
IF JBOD, && Linux, THEN yes you can know, through SMARTTOOLS, or something like that…
However, I can’t imagine how you’d get 2 separate PCIe
( presuming NVMe devices …
… no, this thing must be presuming SATA, NOT NVMe …
even in SATA, there’s no bifurcator for SATA, I don’t think:
SAS has expanders, which can take a single SAS channel & attach something like 128 SAS devices onto it,
PCIe has some kind of equivalent, and there is a PCIe card which crams loads of NVMe’s into it, out in the last year, but SATA??
Hmm… )
shrug
The equivalent of SAS expanders for SATA are called port multipliers, and the JMS562 chip in the picture can act as one (as well as becoming a sort of RAID controller).
Question, where did you find these?
Amazon. QNAP and StarTech Make them.
Why not ask QNAP or StarTech support about how they operate then?
01189998819991197253@infosec.pub 7 months ago
TIL these exist. Neat.
helenslunch@feddit.nl 7 months ago
You’re neat