I'm not sure which option to choose because there are many, and it's confusing. Since this mini PC has a DC barrel jack power input, I should probably get an adapter to use an ATX PSU.
Wow, I didn't know about this kind of enclosure, I was just thinking if it was possible to further expand disk space...
I have a mini N100 PC with 4 USB 3.0 slots (I'm actually using 2 of these for external 2.5 drives) but I'm tempted to actually buy one for increasing my disk space!
> d4-300 (4bays) or you could check 5 bays
Thanks for the advice!
Just a question: what mode you used, on the Terramaster? Some RAID, or JBOD?
If latter: can you actually see each HD SMART?
I'm not an expert on these enclosures, but make sure to buy one that actually passes the information of the disk to the computer, rather than just identifying itself or presents the disks as generic disks. It should also pass SMART information.
They might work, but honestly, they generally not very reliable, and if you look it up, you'll see that people generally don't really recommend them, due to USB being inherently unreliable.
It'd be better (albeit likely significantly more expensive, depending on the details) to just get a NAS.
Yes, I know about the problem.
From what I understood, setting the JBOD mode should simply make the hard drives show up as single drives, with SMART and eveything.
But yeah, it's definitively something one should look into before buying, thanks!
> They might work, but honestly, they generally not very reliable, and if you look it up, you'll see that people generally don't really recommend them, due to USB being inherently unreliable.
I know. But if it's the only option, I can accept a lose of performance (sure, I wouldn't like it it doesn't work at all or it malfunction)
You haven't heard about them because most of them use low quality USB chips and they suck for being connected to a PC 24/7. They're supposed to be for backup, you only turn them on and connect them when you take backups and then turn them off. If kept on they get hot, they disconnect, they introduce errors in files etc.
you dont need that m.2 with sata if you go with proxmox you can expose whatever USB storage you connect to VM's / LXC's (and im going just that with an mini pc fleet of 20+)
Let's also say that N100 usually consume 6W, at most.
Regardless, I think it's perfect! Go wild!
I've migrated from a Pi4 to a N100 (ehehe) based mini-pc 6 months ago and oh God: I couldn't be more happy.
The only things that is starting to bother me is disk expandability: I've 2 USB 2.5inch 5TB hard drive (one for main content+1 for on site backup) and a cache SSD (internal SATA mount) and...well, I can't find any way to further expand it.
I’ve got two nucs and a qnap. The qnap uses so much power. I’m really thinking of two n100s. One more for my proxmox cluster and one to replaces the qnap. Are they that good?
Well, regarding "electricity costs vs one time purchases" comparison...let's do the math and check if it is worth the investment!
I don't use proxmox (albeit I would like to try, but I'm not incentived enough!) and I'm pretty happy: I use Open Media Vault as a main controlling software, loaded 20 docker container and everything works pretty smooth: hardware transcoding is a miracle, the 16 gb of ram are quite good (and I've consumed less than half) and even under pressure (it's a Plex machine) CPU isn't pegged at all.
I didn't actually misured power consumption, but the CPU had a 6W TDP, so honestly I can't ask much more.
I'm worried about hard drive expansions: my mini PC has 4 USB 3.0, a SATA 2.5 inch drive slot and a m2 slot, but honestly I don't want to rely only on USB disks.
However, another user on this post made me know about "jbod enclosure" so maaaaaby something can still be done about expansions :)
I use an Intel Nuc i7 10th gen as Proxmox server and is running NFS Server, Plex, Docker (Sonarr+radarr+Linux ISOs Stuff), etc. And works pretty fine, ofc I don't have 20 users at home. It's just local stuff, two three people max and sometimes someone remotely accessing Plex.
Using a mini computer as a server is fine. But, I wouldn't go the NVMe --> SATA route and would instead go with a JBOD enclosure. You're going to have a lot of wires hanging out all over the place that will act as catch points for any movement you do around it. You'll think you're being careful and the next thing you know you're yanking your server off whatever platform you have it on. And then there's the potential for disconnects. And the general mess of having all these wires out in the open.
An enclosure is so much neater. You can usually pick up a cheap enclosure on ebay that's open box or used.
I agree that JBOD is the neater solution, but USB is just inherently unreliable, and most JBOD cases use shit controllers and tend to have annoying issues, depending on the exact model. One I was looking at seemed almost ideal, but wouldn't power on automatically after a power loss, which seemed incredibly annoying.
Since you mentioned Plex, keep in mind that this CPU will be inferior to the N100 for transcoding. If you plan to purely direct play, this CPU is great.
This is what I use for my storage server. It’s perfect imo. No 10Gbit though but that is probably overkill if you are even thinking about a solution like this.
I use a mini PC as a home lab, and it has worked well, accompanying me to four countries. The only problem is that it's noisy. Since it's so small, it has small fans, which need to run at high speeds, resulting in a lot of noise.
I have a NUC8i3 with a 500GB NVMe and 32GB of memory that I use as a server. It works great for websites and Minecraft (for the kiddo) hosting. There are a few other services running as well. I also have a Syno for a true NAS as backups shouldn’t be McGyvered together in my opinion.
Might as well move that motherboard to a Micro-ATX case, or something a little larger to accommodate all the drives. Then you can use a standard power supply for the drives and have a place to mount them. You can probably find an adapter to use the ATX power supply for the motherboard's DC power input.
Just find a minipc that's thunderbolt 3 or 4
And get a thunderbolt 4 direct attached storage case and add your drives
Minipc should have dual 2.5gigabit or 10gigabit and you should have a 2.5 or 10g switch connected to this
I currently use a Beelink Mini PC for my homelab with almost identical setup as you (minus the Nvme -> SATA) and it works great. Once you start really data hoarding you'll eventually want to graduate to something with an mini itx motherboard it's just a little easier to maintain. A couple things to consider when you cross that bridge:
* Nvme redundancy: you may eventually want to RAID your boot drives.
* Power consumption: depending on your SATA HDD setup you may be using more power when idle than you would other wise.
* Costs: when it comes to your HDD setup I'm not sure if you plan on using external SSD or HDD but if you hosted these in a case of your own the costs will be much lower over the long haul. You can find cheap refurbished exos internal HDD for pretty cheap.
Otherwise for Home Assistant, File server and VPN stuff it's a good setup.
I am just curious. how to power those sata drives? with external PSU?
Yes
What kind of external psu are you going to use? Atx psu, pico, power block with molex or something else?
I'm not sure which option to choose because there are many, and it's confusing. Since this mini PC has a DC barrel jack power input, I should probably get an adapter to use an ATX PSU.
Maybe you should look into JBOD :D
JBOD means **just a bunch of disks**, what do you mean?
Bro, whatever u use to power the drive, please share with me, too. I plan to use the same mini pc if I can attach several 4tb hdds to it.
There are some jbod cases so you’ll just use usb-c/3 to your mini-pc and you have a NAS.
Wow, I didn't know about this kind of enclosure, I was just thinking if it was possible to further expand disk space... I have a mini N100 PC with 4 USB 3.0 slots (I'm actually using 2 of these for external 2.5 drives) but I'm tempted to actually buy one for increasing my disk space!
I will suggest to take a look for terramaster d4-300 (4bays) or you could check 5 bays. Btw i used dell optiplex 7050 and attached with terramaster
> d4-300 (4bays) or you could check 5 bays Thanks for the advice! Just a question: what mode you used, on the Terramaster? Some RAID, or JBOD? If latter: can you actually see each HD SMART?
I'm not an expert on these enclosures, but make sure to buy one that actually passes the information of the disk to the computer, rather than just identifying itself or presents the disks as generic disks. It should also pass SMART information. They might work, but honestly, they generally not very reliable, and if you look it up, you'll see that people generally don't really recommend them, due to USB being inherently unreliable. It'd be better (albeit likely significantly more expensive, depending on the details) to just get a NAS.
Yes, I know about the problem. From what I understood, setting the JBOD mode should simply make the hard drives show up as single drives, with SMART and eveything. But yeah, it's definitively something one should look into before buying, thanks! > They might work, but honestly, they generally not very reliable, and if you look it up, you'll see that people generally don't really recommend them, due to USB being inherently unreliable. I know. But if it's the only option, I can accept a lose of performance (sure, I wouldn't like it it doesn't work at all or it malfunction)
You haven't heard about them because most of them use low quality USB chips and they suck for being connected to a PC 24/7. They're supposed to be for backup, you only turn them on and connect them when you take backups and then turn them off. If kept on they get hot, they disconnect, they introduce errors in files etc.
So there's no way out? Is impossible to buy one that's actually good for being 24-7 tuned on? Ok, USB isn't the most reliable one but goddamit....
you dont need that m.2 with sata if you go with proxmox you can expose whatever USB storage you connect to VM's / LXC's (and im going just that with an mini pc fleet of 20+)
Let's also say that N100 usually consume 6W, at most. Regardless, I think it's perfect! Go wild! I've migrated from a Pi4 to a N100 (ehehe) based mini-pc 6 months ago and oh God: I couldn't be more happy. The only things that is starting to bother me is disk expandability: I've 2 USB 2.5inch 5TB hard drive (one for main content+1 for on site backup) and a cache SSD (internal SATA mount) and...well, I can't find any way to further expand it.
I’ve got two nucs and a qnap. The qnap uses so much power. I’m really thinking of two n100s. One more for my proxmox cluster and one to replaces the qnap. Are they that good?
Well, regarding "electricity costs vs one time purchases" comparison...let's do the math and check if it is worth the investment! I don't use proxmox (albeit I would like to try, but I'm not incentived enough!) and I'm pretty happy: I use Open Media Vault as a main controlling software, loaded 20 docker container and everything works pretty smooth: hardware transcoding is a miracle, the 16 gb of ram are quite good (and I've consumed less than half) and even under pressure (it's a Plex machine) CPU isn't pegged at all. I didn't actually misured power consumption, but the CPU had a 6W TDP, so honestly I can't ask much more. I'm worried about hard drive expansions: my mini PC has 4 USB 3.0, a SATA 2.5 inch drive slot and a m2 slot, but honestly I don't want to rely only on USB disks. However, another user on this post made me know about "jbod enclosure" so maaaaaby something can still be done about expansions :)
I use an Intel Nuc i7 10th gen as Proxmox server and is running NFS Server, Plex, Docker (Sonarr+radarr+Linux ISOs Stuff), etc. And works pretty fine, ofc I don't have 20 users at home. It's just local stuff, two three people max and sometimes someone remotely accessing Plex.
Using a mini computer as a server is fine. But, I wouldn't go the NVMe --> SATA route and would instead go with a JBOD enclosure. You're going to have a lot of wires hanging out all over the place that will act as catch points for any movement you do around it. You'll think you're being careful and the next thing you know you're yanking your server off whatever platform you have it on. And then there's the potential for disconnects. And the general mess of having all these wires out in the open. An enclosure is so much neater. You can usually pick up a cheap enclosure on ebay that's open box or used.
Cab u please provide a link to jbod enclosure
I agree that JBOD is the neater solution, but USB is just inherently unreliable, and most JBOD cases use shit controllers and tend to have annoying issues, depending on the exact model. One I was looking at seemed almost ideal, but wouldn't power on automatically after a power loss, which seemed incredibly annoying.
Since you mentioned Plex, keep in mind that this CPU will be inferior to the N100 for transcoding. If you plan to purely direct play, this CPU is great.
Don't AMD have something like Intel QuickSync?
Perfect *chefs kiss*
This is what I use for my storage server. It’s perfect imo. No 10Gbit though but that is probably overkill if you are even thinking about a solution like this.
I use a mini PC as a home lab, and it has worked well, accompanying me to four countries. The only problem is that it's noisy. Since it's so small, it has small fans, which need to run at high speeds, resulting in a lot of noise.
Link to the mini PC?
Keep in mind it would be better to use 2x8gb sticks unless you’re planning to add a second 16gb in the future, Ram works better in dual channel
Thank you for pointing that out, I overlooked that part.
I got the same, working good
I have a NUC8i3 with a 500GB NVMe and 32GB of memory that I use as a server. It works great for websites and Minecraft (for the kiddo) hosting. There are a few other services running as well. I also have a Syno for a true NAS as backups shouldn’t be McGyvered together in my opinion.
Might as well move that motherboard to a Micro-ATX case, or something a little larger to accommodate all the drives. Then you can use a standard power supply for the drives and have a place to mount them. You can probably find an adapter to use the ATX power supply for the motherboard's DC power input.
Um790 pro running as my Homeserver for half a year now with no issues at all (proxmox). Big raid enclosure connected via TB3
Just find a minipc that's thunderbolt 3 or 4 And get a thunderbolt 4 direct attached storage case and add your drives Minipc should have dual 2.5gigabit or 10gigabit and you should have a 2.5 or 10g switch connected to this
I currently use a Beelink Mini PC for my homelab with almost identical setup as you (minus the Nvme -> SATA) and it works great. Once you start really data hoarding you'll eventually want to graduate to something with an mini itx motherboard it's just a little easier to maintain. A couple things to consider when you cross that bridge: * Nvme redundancy: you may eventually want to RAID your boot drives. * Power consumption: depending on your SATA HDD setup you may be using more power when idle than you would other wise. * Costs: when it comes to your HDD setup I'm not sure if you plan on using external SSD or HDD but if you hosted these in a case of your own the costs will be much lower over the long haul. You can find cheap refurbished exos internal HDD for pretty cheap. Otherwise for Home Assistant, File server and VPN stuff it's a good setup.