using only external USB drives for storage space

  • Hi,
    really noob question.. sorry in advance!


    With all the thin clients, cheapest nuc boxes available, would it possible to install OMV in it and use external USB drives for storage in order to quickly build a relatively cheap 1 or 2 drives NAS?
    I'm not sure how reliable the USB bus could be.. but in case of a drive fail there are some pretty cheap replacements out there.. and even if won't look as the neatest of the setups, having to swap drives without open the enclosure has its appeal.


    Thanks for any suggestion

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I don't see why it couldn't be done. You might see some speed differences on some things, due to the speed differences between the USB bus and the normal internal SATA bus. The only other issue I could see... is if for some reason the NAS is powered off.. you'd want to make sure the external drives are turned on (ie, external power source) before turning the machine on. Otherwise, the machine will eventually boot, but I believe it would complain about missing file systems, services probably wouldn't start properly, etc. If the external drives were not on prior to when you booted the machine, turn on the drives, log into the webUI mount the external file systems, and *probably* (not sure on this part) restart any service that uses the data that is on the USB drives (ie, SMB, Plex, etc..)


    So can it be done? Yes. Is it practical? Not really... just get a cheap case and put the drives inside the case on the SATA bus.

  • Just get something with USB 3 (note that the Celeron NUC only has one USB3 Port) and you'll be fine...


    Zitat

    just get a cheap case and put the drives inside the case on the SATA bus.


    Well, that is way more expensive then the setup he has on his mind I guess.



    Greetings
    David

    "Well... lately this forum has become support for everything except omv" [...] "And is like someone is banning Google from their browsers"


    Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former.

    Upload Logfile via WebGUI/CLI
    #openmediavault on freenode IRC | German & English | GMT+1
    Absolutely no Support via PM!

  • You might see some speed differences on some things, due to the speed differences between the USB bus and the normal internal SATA bus.


    There are of course differences, but you will reach the limitations of a single gigabit network link long before the throughput of an USB3 or SATA link reach their limits. So that doesn't make a difference in terms of usability of a NAS.

    Homebox: Bitfenix Prodigy Case, ASUS E45M1-I DELUXE ITX, 8GB RAM, 5x 4TB HGST Raid-5 Data, 1x 320GB 2,5" WD Bootdrive via eSATA from the backside
    Companybox 1: Standard Midi-Tower, Intel S3420 MoBo, Xeon 3450 CPU, 16GB RAM, 5x 2TB Seagate Data, 1x 80GB Samsung Bootdrive - testing for iSCSI to ESXi-Hosts
    Companybox 2: 19" Rackservercase 4HE, Intel S975XBX2 MoBo, C2D@2200MHz, 8GB RAM, HP P212 Raidcontroller, 4x 1TB WD Raid-0 Data, 80GB Samsung Bootdrive, Intel 1000Pro DualPort (Bonded in a VLAN) - Temp-NFS-storage for ESXi-Hosts

Jetzt mitmachen!

Sie haben noch kein Benutzerkonto auf unserer Seite? Registrieren Sie sich kostenlos und nehmen Sie an unserer Community teil!