I was thinking on buying a 2-4 bay HDD powered enclosure as a NAS for my mini pc, since I already have that, and buying or building a full-fledged diy NAS seems a bit expensive.

I want to hear some opinions from you guys, since it seems using this method is a mixed area from the selfhosted pros. I would be hoping that by using a powered enclosure, that would alleviate or solve the USB port overcharging issue, which have appeared in my mini pc when trying out an external HDD with a normal sata to usb converter.

Did you have any experiences with a setup like this one?

@DolphinMath@slrpnk.net
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I’ve personally gone with an N100 Mini PC running Proxmox and two of these daisy-chained (purchased on sale). https://www.amazon.com/MAIWO-Enclosure-Cooling-Storage-Expansion/dp/B0D28Q187R/

The MAIWO DAS uses garbage JMicron firmware by default, and there are significant issues with their sleep functions. Because of that, it took me forever to figure out why SnapRAID kept failing mid-sync. Fortunately, new firmware seems to have fixed their issues and they’ve been rock solid ever since. I specifically had to update the firmware for all 4 of the USB controllers on each DAS.

Direct link to firmware that worked for me. https://gbatemp.net/attachments/bin-16028_jms578_std_v00-04-01-04_self_power_odd_20190611-zip.230929/

JMS578_STD_v00.04.01.04_Self Power + ODD.bin

MD5: 7701fb7a968e3ad4ca926dd7854806ff

Firmware updater tool for Windows found here. I ran this from a Virtualbox Windows 10 VM inside my Arch install: https://gbatemp.net/attachments/jmicron-jms578-sata-crystal-enclosure-fwupdate-zip.216335/

FwUpdateTool_v1_19_16_24.exe

MD5: 735ec8d9f99c457ce793739480c55706

Mirrors for posterity:

https://files.catbox.moe/e4121s.zip

https://mega.nz/file/OJAX2KhQ#67kIDJun92nqi56mFur_9vALSi2yTJXXv7ew5pYSJVY

Blog post detailing firmware update procedure for an external drive: https://ralimtek.com/posts/2021/jms578/

Detailed post on JMS578: https://gbatemp.net/threads/how-to-update-firmware-of-jmicron-jms578-usb3-0-sata-enclosure-black-screen-lock-music-stop.569158/

Alternate FOSS software for flashing I found later, but never used. https://github.com/BertoldVdb/jms578flash

PrivateNoob
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37d

Wow thank you for these links, you’re insane. And if you would start this homelab process again, then would you go with this mini PC + DAS layout again, or with desktop pc as a NAS?

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