Moving external disks to a DAS?

[Host-in-the-Shell]

When I first started experimenting with hosting JF, I had some spare external drives and decided to attach those to store my media; fast forward a couple years later, and now I'm considering using a DAS to make my setup more convenient and take less physical space. Having never used a DAS before, I have a couple questions regarding it, in case anybody here has experience with one:

• If I shuck the hard drives out of their encases and insert them on the DAS, would that work? 
  

• Does the server read the disk the same way it does when plugged externally through the DAS, so I don't have to update fstab?
  
• Would I be able to share all the disks through NFS as I did before when plugged in the DAS also?
  

The external drives in question are 2x 6TB, 1x 10TB, 2x 8TB Western Digital Elements Desktop USB 3.0 external hard drive and the DAS I'm considering getting is a TERRAMASTER D4-320.

Thanks in advance for any response.

[TheDreadPirate]

As long as the DAS enclosure "passes through" the hard drive, it should behave the same as your drives do now. Depending on how you setup fstab you may need to update it. As long as you used the unique WWN identifier you shouldn't need to change anything. If you used the sda, sdb, sdc, etc., device path than those will probably shift around. And you will be able to share than over the network. SMB/NFS doesn't care what kind of drive it is or how it is attached.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

Well, I used UUID but that should persist too considering none of the partitions will be wiped.

I have some server grade 14TB disks arriving that are supposed to be good for a couple million continuous hours, and these will replace all the WD elements disk, but they arrive in about 2 months, maybe a little more. I figured I could buy the DAS early and shuck all my external disks in it, but I'm concerned about the issue with the 3.3V pin in some that stops them from working, and I don't want to put tape on them and have it make a mess over time. I was going to later retire them as internal disks for other computers, but eh, suppose I could keep them in their external form after all.

In the end, it's probably best to just suck it up and wait, plug the DAS with the new disks, and copy the data over. I will have to rebuild fstab then, but that's expected and worth it.

[alb123]

When I first started experimenting with hosting JF, I had some spare external drives and decided to attach those to store my media; fast forward a couple years later, and now I'm considering using a DAS to make my setup more convenient and take less physical space. Having never used a DAS before, I have a couple questions regarding it, in case anybody here has experience with one:

• If I shuck the hard drives out of their encases and insert them on the DAS, would that work? 
  

• Does the server read the disk the same way it does when plugged externally through the DAS, so I don't have to update fstab?
  
• Would I be able to share all the disks through NFS as I did before when plugged in the DAS also?
  

The external drives in question are 2x 6TB, 1x 10TB, 2x 8TB Western Digital Elements Desktop USB 3.0 external hard drive and the DAS I'm considering getting is a TERRAMASTER D4-320.

Thanks in advance for any response.

Bro...I am in the same exact spot as you, except my hell is quite a bit larger.



That's 214 TB (I think).  C is a 500 GB SSD and D & E are very old 3TB WD Green internal drives.  G thru Z are all WD External HDDs (My Book or Elements).  This is my Jellyfin server Intel i3.  I've been thinking of buying a used big 36 bay Supermicro Server off Ebay and then shuck these puppies.  I also have about four 8 TB and two 10 TB External HDDs that I've removed from this system because it just can't handle any more external USB HDDs in its current configuration.  The servers I've been looking at are between $800-$1100 depending on configuration, of course.

I'm an unhealthy dude living on disability so I'm not exactly rolling in funds which is why I started piecing together the media server the way I did.  I never, in a million years, expected it to get out of control like this.  Luckily, my partner makes great money and encourages my crazy hobbies...she's the best!  With the dual XEON server I figure I could also do quite a few other things with VMs.  I just have A LOT to learn.

You might want to take a peak into those refurbished servers on ebay.  Some come configured for TrueNAS or UnRAID if you're not looking for a full blown Windows or Linux box.  You don't need to spend $1000 either.  For instance, here's a dual XEON server with 128GB RAM, 12 hot-swappable drive bays...just gotta add your own hard drives.  I don't know if this is a good config or good price I just wanted to share something with you, give you something else to think about.

https://www.ebay.com/itm/135016153556?_n...BMgPu2z65k



Again...I'm NOT an expert in this stuff as you can clearly tell.  LOL  I just know, for myself, I made a big mistake doing things the way I've been doing them.  I want to do things smarter in the future.  I've already been building a little rack system for my Unifi Networking gear so I'm looking forward to slapping a rack mounted server in that bad boy... 

Good luck!

[TheDreadPirate]

For THAT many drives, you definitely need a workstation or server CPU just for the PCIe lanes for all the HBA cards you'll need to connect them.

Honestly, I'd choose a 1000 series Ryzen Threadripper or something and case like a Fractal Meshify 2.  1000 series Threadrippers are cheap, 64 PCIe lanes, throw in as many HBA cards as the E-ATX motherboard can fit, the Meshify 2 can mount....12(?) hard drives internally.

My much more tame setup in a Meshify 2.

   

[Host-in-the-Shell]

So I live in the third world and salaries over here, even for college educated individuals are not very high. I make in the ballpark of 1500 US dollars a month holding a master's degree. What's worse is that we have an import tax for any technology that we bring over that exceeds 200 dollars, which is 18% of the total cost of the item on top, plus additional expenditures for fuel and others usually adds 100 dollars more to the 18% tax, but it varies.

The idea is to motivate us to buy locally and stimulate the country's own economy, but unfortunately these kind of workstations and homelabs are rarely available and if they are, they cost comparatively to a car's down payment or worse. Either way is essentially out of reach for me.

That said, I don't particularly need that much juice anyway; been self hosting for the better part of 20 years and the only services I've accumulated on all that time are my media server, website, dns server, nextcloud, rss sync service and a metasearch engine. I'm hosting all of that on a mini pc which handles it all without any issue, with the exception of my media server, which uses an old gaming pc with an arc GPU.

My usage of external disks comes from the fact that you really can't find any for sale in my country; when I go to the store, I only find 1-2 tb internal disks, and maybe if I'm lucky, a 4tb external one. And usually the last one is overpriced at nearly 200 dollars. External disks on amazon are usually under 200 and pay no taxes as opposed to internal ones, which do even under 200, as a rule exception unfortunately.

Anyway, recently I've been delving into selling pc parts and getting certain tax exemptions through commercial licenses and this allowed me to batch order internal drives of which I can retain some for personal use. So 4x for my DAS amount to 56tb, which is more than enough for me. I'm already struggling to fill out 38tb, so I think 56 will be sufficient for my use case even if I indulge myself into adding all kinds of super sentai and tokusatsu shows to my collection, which would probably grow it a couple TBs.

[alb123]

So I live in the third world and salaries over here, even for college educated individuals are not very high. I make in the ballpark of 1500 US dollars a month holding a master's degree. What's worse is that we have an import tax for any technology that we bring over that exceeds 200 dollars, which is 18% of the total cost of the item on top, plus additional expenditures for fuel and others usually adds 100 dollars more to the 18% tax, but it varies.

The idea is to motivate us to buy locally and stimulate the country's own economy, but unfortunately these kind of workstations and homelabs are rarely available and if they are, they cost comparatively to a car's down payment or worse. Either way is essentially out of reach for me.

That said, I don't particularly need that much juice anyway; been self hosting for the better part of 20 years and the only services I've accumulated on all that time are my media server, website, dns server, nextcloud, rss sync service and a metasearch engine. I'm hosting all of that on a mini pc which handles it all without any issue, with the exception of my media server, which uses an old gaming pc with an arc GPU.

My usage of external disks comes from the fact that you really can't find any for sale in my country; when I go to the store, I only find 1-2 tb internal disks, and maybe if I'm lucky, a 4tb external one. And usually the last one is overpriced at nearly 200 dollars. External disks on amazon are usually under 200 and pay no taxes as opposed to internal ones, which do even under 200, as a rule exception unfortunately.

Anyway, recently I've been delving into selling pc parts and getting certain tax exemptions through commercial licenses and this allowed me to batch order internal drives of which I can retain some for personal use. So 4x for my DAS amount to 56tb, which is more than enough for me. I'm already struggling to fill out 38tb, so I think 56 will be sufficient for my use case even if I indulge myself into adding all kinds of super sentai and tokusatsu shows to my collection, which would probably grow it a couple TBs.

Wow.  I've needed a liver transplant some years back and now one of my kidneys is being a total wimp, so he might be on the way out soon.  My health is in shambles.  Got a non-cancerous brain tumor up in me noggin' just to provide the enjoyment of chronic migraines & headaches...A real model of health.  LOL  So, I'm considered "disabled" now.  

Once again, I'm in a similar position as you are - running many services on one tiny box.  In your case, the Mini-PC.  In mine, an old Dell Desktop i3 w/6 GB RAM & embedded Intel video, repurposed to be my Torrent machine, Radarr/Sonarr/Readarr/Calibre Server/YAC Library Server/Jellyfin.  It's really amazing how well such a wimpy box handles things - until Jellyfin gets busy with multiple users and qBittorrent is hard at work.

I'd like to have as big server so I can try running more self-hosting stuff and get some real home automation going on.  We have a Rachio 3, smart thermostat, smart lights and a couple of junk cameras that I plan on replacing with some Unifi cameras (I think...I have all Unifi networking gear at the moment).  I don't want to move into something that is plenty.  I want overkill, in a way, so I have plenty of time to grow into the new machine as I come up with new ideas for having a homelab.  I have so much reading to do, to be honest.  I don't know what is the best play for me right now - and by right now, I mean, even over the next year.  I'm in no immediate rush.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

So I just wanted to follow up on this: I've successfully moved all my media into the DAS, which is running 4x HGST WD Ultrastar DC HC530 14TB Data Center drives. The DAS was simply plug and play with no issues. One of the drives came with 5 bad sectors, but so far it's been running fine after monitoring it for several days. That said, I already have a replacement on the way and will just RMA this one anyway once I clone the media into the new drive, because why not.

For some reason I expected this transition to be far more painful than it was, and other than the time it took to copy over the media and for Jellyfin to rescan everything, the only annoyance I can think of was having to repopulate my collections; everything else remained intact, such as watch history, tags and favorites. I'm honestly very happy with clearing out all that (physical) space that the external disks were occupying and now it looks very neatly organized.

Soon I will be upgrading the server to a modular atx low noise power supply, a new motherboard that supports the D4-320's USB Type-C 3.2 Gen2 10 Gbps connection, and a new CPU cooler. I may even throw in an AMD Ryzen 7 5800X I've freed up recently instead of just selling it as used.

[Host-in-the-Shell]

I ended up upgrading my motherboard, now I have the Asrock B450M PRO4 R2.0 which is a Micro ATX board. For the power supply I added the Corsair RM650, a fully modular low noise ATX 650 Watt psu. Also changed the stock cooler for my 5600X CPU to a Cooler Master Hyper H412R. I'm quite happy with the results: seeing way more power efficiency all around, and connecting the DAS through a super fast USB 3.2 Gen2 10Gbps Type-C connection is perhaps the biggest advantage, since I had to use USB A with the previous motherboard and the TERRAMASTER D4-320 is designed specifically for the aforementioned USB Type-C connection.

In the end kept the 5600X cpu, since the upgrade to a 5800X was not all that useful for my particular case. I gotta say this was a really fun side project and putting all these things together went way better than I expected. Hopefully this new setup serves me well for a long time.