Which NAS do list members prefer?

[SeeMoreDigital]

As I guessed might happen, Radxa has just released a new Penta SATA Hat that can be used on their Rock Pi 4 and Rock Pi 5, and on a Raspberry Pi 5. This provides 4 conventional SATA connectors (including power), plus an eSATA connector, all running off of the M.2 PCIe available on those various SBCs. See Penta SATA Hat. $49.

Oh wow... So in theory I could run 4no 2.5" USB connected HDD's and 5no 2.5" SATA HDD's at the same time!

Out of interest... What file systems are supported? Currently all my 2.5" USB connected HDD's are formatted to NTFS. This is useful because I often unplug them from my Synology NAS and plug them into other devices USB ports, such as TV's, my OPPO's and my Windows computers (to transfer media files more quickly).

Cheers

 

[zdjh22]

Oh wow... So in theory I could run 4no 2.5" USB connected HDD's and 5no 2.5" SATA HDD's at the same time!

Out of interest... What file systems are supported? Currently all my 2.5" USB connected HDD's are formatted to NTFS. This is useful because I often unplug them from my Synology NAS and plug them into other devices USB ports, such as TV's, my OPPO's and my Windows computers (to transfer media files more quickly).

Cheers

Yes, you could connect 4 disks via USB and 5 via SATA (4 internal-style SATA + 1 eSATA). I've never used more than 1 USB disk but there should be no issue with 4.

The supported SBCs all run Linux (various options available), so really whatever file system you like that Linux supports (nearly all) is available, including NTFS if you interchange with Windows. I use ZFS across 5 disks, although on my music NAS the 5th large disk is partitioned with 1 partition for ZFS and the other for XFS (where I store my stereo FLACs and Apple Music+TV library).

 

[atrocity]

Agreed, they should provide links. Allnet does sell suitable supplies. On one of my NAS boxes using this hat (the prior version), I used a SATA chassis which had a conventional PC power supply with ATX connectors, and I plugged one of those directly into the hat to power the SBC and the drives. The other 4 units all used one of the SATA RAID kits from Allnet, which included this 12V DC power supply (Allnet 12V DC supply) which plugs into the Rock Pi 4 and Rock Pi 5 board female barrel connector jack (EDIT - oops, after checking, this plugs into a female barrel connector on the hat). I’m not sure about power options for the RPI 5 - I assume like prior RPI’s you can power via the connectors on a hat, so the ATX or 12V barrel options should work there.

This would really, really simplify my backups...I'd save shelf space and outlets...

 

[zdjh22]

Oh wow... So in theory I could run 4no 2.5" USB connected HDD's and 5no 2.5" SATA HDD's at the same time!

I neglected to note that with SATA (with power) extension cables you can, as I have done, connect 3.5” SATA drives. That’s handy if you want very large capacity drives or drives that are non-SMR (and so have much higher write performance). OTOH if you just want to stack 4 drives on top of the SATA hat you’d need to use 2.5” drives, and you’d need to make sure they are thin enough. I wouldn’t recommend doing that without thinking about cooling (for spinning disks, that is - SSD would be OK).

If you can get your hands on an old multi-disk PC chassis with hot swap bays pretty much all you need are the SATA extension cables and an eSATA to SATA cable. The SBC and SATA hat are tiny and can be stashed away in a spare corner of the chassis (or you can probably figure out how to mount them so that you have easy access to the 4 USB ports for the other 4 disks). The aggregate read/write throughput will be better with the 5 SATA ports (which share 2 PCIe lanes) than with the 4 USB ports (which likely share a single PCIe lane with the network).