Is adding 4 (or 8) more JBOD drives via eSATA enclosure a good or bad idea?

[zenorb]

Hi

Looking to build as large as possible NAS.

Found a case that fits 13 HDD but was wondering if adding another one or two lots of 4 x 3TB drives via eSATA ports is a good or bad idea in the context the four drives each share a single eSATA port and I'm unsure of two factors -

Is having four drives connected to a single eSATA port dangerous if it gets bumped, loses power or port goes bad?

All unlikely but just wondering as RAIDZ2 can only lose two drives. So is this a catastrophic failure risk or do you just plug in again and all comes back to life?

Other issue question is related to speed and efficiency of system. Is four JBOD's via a single eSATA a cumbersome botlleneck when all four drives have to be used simultaneously?

FYI looiking at HornetTek Enterprise 4X or Vantek NexStar HX4

One of the motherboards I'm considering (LGA2011 - asked if suitable in other post) has 14 SATA ports plus 2xeSATA means I could run 22 x 3TB drives this way.

Interested in your experienced opinion.

 

[bollar]

Certainly when you move from appliance NAS to build-your-own NAS, there are some complex issues that you'll want to understand before you put a system into production. These questions aren't limited to FreeNAS, but to any system that isn't provided as a combined hardware/software package with professional vendor support.

Speaking specifically about the eSATA connectivity, ZFS is supposed to handle this reasonably gracefully. If you disconnect too many drives ZFS is supposed to fault the array and take it offline. Once you reattach the missing drives, you can bring the array online and supposedly will not lose data. I have only tried this specifically with hotswap drives and I would want to do some tests to ensure that the scenario you mention is handled correctly.

I am not familiar with the eSATA cards you mention.

 

[JaimieV]

If you intend to run with that many drives, for your data's sake get a case that supports that many inside and powered by dual PSUs, cooled properly. You're probably looking at rackmount shape for that - they don't need to actually be in a rack, but it helps keep the noise down!

With a RAIDZ2 losing 4 drives would almost certainly be a catastrophic failure with loss of all data.

Also consider your backup needs. You may not want to backup the full machine, but parts of it would surely be worth keeping.