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).

  1. If I use RAID 1 and one of the drives fails, will I know?

  2. If a drive fails, and a slap in a new one, will it internally begin repairing RAID 1 again?

  3. 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?

  • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
    413·
    8 months ago

    Neat, but I see it personally as the worst of both worlds, unless you have a bunch of NVMEs sitting around.

    You’re going to be bottlenecked by SATA speeds, so even one NVME would be bottlenecked, let alone 2. So for me, going with a larger SATA SSD (which you could of course RAID with another) would probably get you still better speeds.

    Then you have issue of it breaking. Personally, I have never had good luck with secondary board RAID items like this. They always fail after a while. The only stable raids I have seen are motherboards and SAS. Whenever I see “Make this interface into another RAID” I think of the… 5-7 failed cards sitting behind me.

    • slacktoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
      7·
      8 months ago

      M.2 is a form factor. Under that form factor it can run the NVMe or the SATA protocol.

        • slacktoid@lemmy.mlEnglish
          5·
          8 months ago

          There are m.2 sata drives. They have a different pin layout and everything. It depends on what you want out of the QoS of your system and what bottlenecks you have.

          • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
            21·
            8 months ago

            Yeah, just then I still think it’s the worst of both worlds. You still have a single point of failure, that raid controller on that device probably can’t be ported anywhere else (at least most of the cheap controllers I’ve seen haven’t been able to, most mobo raids I’ve been able to recover), and so if you don’t have redundancy anyway, then a larger SSD is to me, the way to go. Honestly a single SSD and a nightly backup to an external would be how I’d do it if I was on a budget and only had one SATA port remaining.

      • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
        63·
        8 months ago

        If you don’t have a bunch of nvmes lying around that you want to use, then why not just go for a few sata drives and raid those together? You do what you like, to me that just seems like more storage for your buck

        • mbfalzar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
          71·
          8 months ago

          Just as an uninvolved third party, I’m trying to figure out how NVMe entered this response to a question about a SATA to SATA form factor converter

            • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
              14·
              8 months ago

              Right, mostly because the only things you plug into an m.2 slot right now are nvme drives. Which is why I’m honestly trying to figure out what OP wants. They say speed isn’t a concern just storage, so why not go for a larger SATA SSD then? Unless I’m missing something, buying this adapter to add m.2 slots would only give op a couple m.2 slots, vs just adding a sata drive itself. Honestly I don’t know what they’re trying to to do and their comments have made me more confused

              • mbfalzar@lemmy.dbzer0.comEnglish
                2·
                8 months ago

                My desktop has a wireless card in an m.2 slot (as do those of my wife and both children), one of my laptops has a SATA m.2 as its only drive because it only has a SATA m.2 slot, another laptop has a SATA m.2 as the scratch drive because it has one NVMe and one SATA, and “the only things you plug into an m.2 slot right now are nvme drives” is such a wild take that I’m baffled as to where it came from

                • accideath@lemmy.worldEnglish
                  3·
                  8 months ago

                  Which is fair, I suppose, if you really only have one SATA port left. Then a RAID 1 through that device might work well enough. Wouldn’t be my first choice though… and definitely not for RAID 0. Not that RAID 0 should be anyone’s first choice, nowadays.

                • Scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.techEnglish
                  13·
                  8 months ago

                  Neither is there if this controller dies… Like the other person said, my response would be “you don’t have 2 sata ports then?”. Better raid support and better capacity. Take it from my life lessons. Raid 0 is not a backup, it is barely redundant. It’s primary use is production environments where you do not want your system to go down when a drive fails.

    • ShimitarEnglish
      3·
      8 months ago

      You fan pretty effective software raid with Linux built in drivers. No need for hardware raid, specially not cheapo ones…

      Running Linux software raid for 20+ years with zero issues… Currently on USB3 and USB-C disks, but in the past all kind of mixed solutions (ide/sata/esata/USB/FireWire…).

      Speed is not a big issue in my experience if you consume your media over network anyway.

    • bonus_crab@lemmy.worldEnglish
      2·
      8 months ago

      also nvme drives get HOT, and sticking em together in an enclosure with no heatsink or fan would probably have thermal throttle under load.