Trying to decide whether to upgrade or not - 6+ yr old system

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    I've been running OMV for 6+ years on a homebuilt server. I had my docker drive fail recently and rebuilt that and now I have one of my storage drives in my snapraid array acting up. Feels like the computer gods are sending me signals and I'm trying to figure out whether to do a full upgrade or just keep replacing parts as they fail.


    OG System

    AMD Athlon 200G

    B450 MB mini ITX board (ASROCK gaming board - I think it was on sale?)

    16Gb memory
    OS Drive - M.2 2280 250GB PCIe Gen3 (so far so good on this one)

    Docker drive - cobbled together an external drive enclosure after the original one failed using an old steam deck 500Gb drive
    SnapRaid drives - 3 8gb drives shucked from WD Elements external drives

    Fractal Design case (304 I think?) - a little snug but it all fits there


    This is 90% a media server using Jellyfin/Jellyseer, the *arr stack, downloaders, and a few other housekeeping containers. It has frankly been amazing at driving media in my household outside of not being able to transcode effectively. But that hasn't been a dealbreaker in any way so far. It will continue to operate primarily as this use case but I also do some random experimentation lab stuff on a mac mini that occasionally uses that shared storage.


    I already purchased 3 20Tb drives to replace the snapraid drives as I was already planning to upgrade the 95% full storage after I started getting some SMART warnings. Again, got lucky on a sale otherwise would have gone a bit smaller. But now I'm sitting here thinking given the age of the system, the issues I've had over the last few months, etc. that maybe I should just upgrade the whole system before part prices get even more stupid. It would give me an excuse to do mergefs as well.


    If I am going to basically do a full rebuild, I like the idea of one of the N1x0 boards for power and transcoding primarily. Something like mentioned in another thread - ASUS PRIME N100I-D D4 but would love a PCI slot I could potentially use for more M2 drives with an expansion card if needed for something like a cache drive.

    Does anyone have any strong thoughts on:

    • Should I even upgrade at all? I'm worried if prices go nuts on nvme drives, memory, etc. it won't calm down for at least a year or two
    • If I do upgrade, any strong recommendations on either a N1x0 board like above or something different? Or any other HW recommendations?

    Thank you in advance for any help or advice!

    Edited once, last by AustinML: Added OMV version tag ().

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    • Official Post

    Some things to consider:

    - Spinning hard drives are going to fail. With 24x7 use, the typical life of 4 to 7 years. There's a fairly wide +/- factor with some failing sooner and some lasting longer.
    - SSD's are another animal. Frankly I don't believe they've been out long enough to have reliable longevity data but, if they're not written to frequently, they have the potential for a very l-o-n-g life.
    - Motherboard life is a mixed bag of "it depends". In the case of motherboards, anecdotally, I believe 3 things kill them.
    Short duration power surges. (Often these events are not noticed but are "felt" by your equipment.) Electrolytic caps. (They dry out and fail.) Add on components that fail ungracefully (Hard drives, CDROM drives, etc.
    - Power supplies. (Bridge rectifiers and, again, electrolytic caps.)
    - Older stuff is power and performance inefficient. (Over time new equipment can pay for itself in power savings and increased performance.)

    With the above said and while I've been through a few spinning drives; my primary server is a SOHO Lenovo TS140 that has been churning away, without issues for around 10 years. Since it's power efficient, apparently ultra-reliable, with case and CPU fans that are whisper quiet, it's staying right were it is.

    I'm sure others will chime with their ideas.

  • AustinML

    Added the Label OMV 8.x
    • New
    Quote from AustinML

    If I am going to basically do a full rebuild, I like the idea of one of the N1x0 boards for power and transcoding primarily. Something like mentioned in another thread - ASUS PRIME N100I-D D4 but would love a PCI slot I could potentially use for more M2 drives with an expansion card if needed for something like a cache drive.


    I have that board. It has 1 PCIe x1 slot. It also has a m2 E key slot (usually for WiFi) slot which you can use for more SATA ports or 2.5GbE network etc.


    I don't know what the transcoding performance is like on the N100 because I don't need it.

    • New
    Quote from AustinML

    If I am going to basically do a full rebuild, I like the idea of one of the N1x0 boards for power and transcoding primarily. Something like mentioned in another thread - ASUS PRIME N100I-D D4 but would love a PCI slot I could potentially use for more M2 drives with an expansion card if needed for something like a cache drive.

    Negative points of the board with the latest official BIOS version 0405 (January 2024):


    - For operation without a monitor, an HDMI dummy (or VGA or DP dummy) should be used. It works without one, but then the board will "complain" but will continue booting.

    - Originally, there is only one SATA port.

    - The PCIe slot is "linked" to the internal LAN. This means that if you use a 2.5 GbE LAN card in the PCIe slot and disable the internal GbE LAN in the BIOS, the PCIe slot and therefore the 2.5 GbE LAN card will no longer function. When using the M.2 WLAN port (A+E key) for a 2.5 GbE card (available cheaply on AliExpress), there are no problems when disabling the internal LAN port. For a new build, I would always choose the ASRock ITX board over the ASUS board at this point, even though it consumes 3-4 watts more power.

    Advantages: "Independent" x4 PCIe slot, second SATA port. Disadvantages: 19V external power supply (requires an external laptop power adapter), higher power consumption, approximately €30 more expensive, only one digital monitor output (irrelevant for NAS use).


    If using a larger case, I would prefer the less expensive and better-equipped ASRock mATX N100 motherboard to both ITX boards.

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