I have an 11th gen Framework mainboard which I would like to repurpose as a server. Unfortunately, (unless I do some super janky stuff) I can only connect 1 drive to it over M.2 and any additional ones must be over USB.
I am thinking of just using some portable hard drives and plugging them in over USB. I plan to RAID1 them and use them as boot drives and data storage, and use the M.2 slot for something unrelated.
In your experiences, is USB reliable enough nowadays to run a RAID array for a server like this? If it is, does it depend on the specific drive used?
No. USB is not designed to be reliable. It’s designed to be plug and play. Don’t plug and play with your data.
USB-storage isn’t reliable.
Period.
ANY fscking thing that bumps any connection, can break the dam link.
Then your kernel can re-label the device when it re-connects,
and you’ve got to reassemble your RAID.
just my experience.
use ANY other method you can, other than USB.
stick a SATA adaptor on there somewhere, if you can.
Get a different motherboard.
ANYthing, but not USB.
I plan to RAID1 them and use them as boot drives
This will not work unless the mainboard is handling the RAID control in firmware. If you are doing software RAID then the OS must boot before the array can be accessed.
If you just want to set up a NAS, you can get a used PowerEdge tower for very little money, and it will work a lot better than what you have planned.
In the past I have used Proxmox with ZFS raid on a basic mini PC. With ZFS raid it syncs everything except /boot. Proxmox has a tool called “proxmox-boot-tool-refresh” which will syncs /boot between drives. ZFS kernel module can be loaded in the initramfs so it will boot fine, even if missing a drive.
For this project I do not plan to use ZFS, but AFAIK software raid is now standard. Here is a popular video from Level1Techs talking about the flaws of hardware RAID: https://youtu.be/l55GfAwa8RI
Here is an alternative Piped link(s):
https://piped.video/l55GfAwa8RI
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source; check me out at GitHub.
You are quite likely to regret going down this route. Should do what you have to to get the drives properly connected.
I have minipc that only has one drive slot. I use an external thunderbolt enclosure with a eNVM drive in it
It works ok for me but don’t expect great performance and reliability.