Homelab Storage. DAS, Docks, Enclousures

#HomeLab

DAS with RAID

There is a bunch of cool DAS available on Amazon including ones with RAID.

There are different brands, but it seems like most of them are produced by the same OEM manufacturer. Secondly, there is a noticeable drop of review rating of those devices that support RAID.

I assume that it's because of the unreliable combination of cheap hardware with RAID complexity.

However, there a few of them which I find kinda cool.

CENMATE 2 Bay Enclosure

That's probably the highest rated DAS on Amazon US and ES so far with a heavy-duty NAS design of a VHS player from my childhood. Very cheap and according to the reviews it's comparably reliable. Supports both 3.5 and 2.5 hard drives.

Reasons not to buy: In general, it can be considered a 5-star thing, but still there are a few reviews saying that it managed to kill the drives. Especially the 4-bay version.

Yottamaster 4 Bay Aluminum Enclosure

Yet Another favorite HDD dock from the design standpoint. Alumunium brick with Apple vibes is awesome.

Reason not to buy: There is something really weird with reviews. These docks seem to sometimes die-off and other times kill the drives. Probably power supply-related. Maybe an issue with raid hardware.

No-Raid DAS

These guys seem to be more reliable thanks to their simplicity.

SABRENT Docking Station

Probably one of my favourite HDD docks from the design standpoint.

Reason not to buy I personally don't like the idea of active cooling with tightly placed drives. Another cons is 2.5 drives limitation which fits either small 2.5 HDD or SSD drives.

HDD Docks with Cloning Feature

Fideco, Orico, Sabrent – HDD docks of all kinds with a cloning feature have an insanely good rating no matter the manufacturer, and design. Especially the 2-bay versions. Probably it's because of the simple hardware that has nothing to break.

The down-side is an absence of active cooling. However, I believe that it's not a problem for devices with a proper passive airflow design..

Disk Misc

USB Hubs

USB hubs with dedicated power supply can be useful in a portable homelab situation with external drives.

Dual-SSD SATA Adapter with RAID

Another cool thing is a hardware RAID SATA adapter for M2 SSDs like this. An incredible gadget for a compact and inexpensive solution with redundancy in mind.

Reasons not to buy: If you are going to use software RAID, like [[ZFS]] or [[MDRAID]] then you don't need hardware RAID0, RAID1, or spanning modes of the adapter itself.

I've done a quick research of the StarTech's Dual M.2 SATA RAID Adapter and it turned out that Non-Raid JBOD mode isn't compatible with all the PC hardware. The SATA controller of the PC motherboard should support a port multiplier, otherwise, only 1 disk would be available.