Looking for an SBC to run a low power NAS

Preferably with multiple SATA ports or an expansion slot that can take a PCIE card.

clyne 9 points 3 years ago

I’ve got an Odroid HC4, comes in a toaster-like enclosure with two SATA ports. Quad-core, 4gb RAM. Works well if you want something fairly simple.

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phanto 2 points 3 years ago

I have one of those, ran it for a while, and one day no files. I put it on my "fix it one day" shelf. Never did figure out what happened.

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clyne 2 points 3 years ago

Strange, I wonder if that was the SD card or one of the SATA drives? I mirror my data between the two HDDs for redundancy and occasionally run remote backups, though I've never had any problems with data loss. Been running mine for 2-3 years.

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will_a113 6 points 3 years ago

If PCI-E is a must your best bet (with least headaches) is still something x86 based, and for the lowest power you'd want something like a celeron-N or J series. For example this board: https://www.asrock.com/mb/Intel/J5040-ITX/ has sata, m2, pci-e, non-soldered RAM and will idle at ~6-7W (excluding storage). If I were doing it, though, I'd spend a few extra watts on an i3-10300 or later, which will idle at maybe 10-12W (again excluding storage) but give you much better performance and much better hardware assistance for video transcoding if you're going to be running plex/jellyfin or an OTA DVR. I use an Asus PN-41 miniPC with an i3 10300 with a couple of USB-C HDDs as an offsite backup server, and it idles right in that range plus about 5W per attached disk (when not spun down).

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bobzrkr 5 points 3 years ago

https://www.pine64.org/rockpro64/

https://a.co/d/7N0HakF

If I remember I'll post the pcie card with 4x sata I use.

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bobzrkr 4 points 3 years ago

https://a.co/d/j6zZrhO

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clothes 1 point 3 years ago

I've looked at this route before, but worried that it would be a headache to get everything running smoothly. What's your experience been?

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bobzrkr 4 points 3 years ago

Hardest part was mounting everything in my 1U chassis. Using an ATX power supply with the break out board solved a lot of problems. That way the SBC gets 12v, and the sata drives get power at the same time. And you've got connectors for fans and stuff. You can use a smaller form factor PSU. I think mine is like 200W but that's more than enough to power the board, expansion card, fans, and drives.

On the software side, I just use the Debian based distro "Armbian". But it looks like you can use others.

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clothes 1 point 3 years ago

Hah, I haven't even started thinking about mounting problems. Awesome, thanks for this!

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pineapplelover -2 points 3 years ago

Well the rp4 rp5 just came out

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IamRoot 2 points 3 years ago