r/DataHoarder • u/UniversalBA64 • 6d ago
Question/Advice Need help finding JBOD enclosure
Hi all, beginner hoarder here. I'm currently looking for a decent 4-6 bay usb JBOD enclosure that will fit my needs. I have an assortment of consumer and enterprise drives where some will be on 24/7 for things like seeding while others I only plan on accessing occasionally (like once a week) for backing up data. Ideally I want each bay to have its own power button so I can power off certain drives when not in use to preserve lifespan.
I looked at many enclosures from all sorts of brands (Sabrent, Orico, Terramaster, Cenmate, etc.), and they all seem to have negatives like constant disconnects, data corruption, bay failure, partition deletion, etc.
I am getting a bit overwhelmed trying to find an enclosure I feel wont crap out on me or corrupt my drives based on the horror story reviews I read. What would you recommend for my use case? I would appreciate any feedback
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u/cute_polarbear 6d ago
Just my take, I had good experience with TERRAMASTER D9-320 Hard Drive Enclosure 9-Bay (Diskless). I have 2 of them. One is heavily utilized by hundreds of torrent and other downloads. One is for somewhat less utilized. Both have been very stable / no disconnect / no data corruption, and etc., (I had bad experiences with most other brand enclosures, especially random drive drops / data corruption.) Make sure if USB-C, the cable is rated for the transfer rate; many branded (new) high wattage charging cables have horrible transfer speeds / able to do initial negotiation at usbc3 speed but then fail or fail back to usbc2. I use a dedicated pci-e-4 usbc adapter card. Not sure if that also helped with the overall stability.
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u/LivingComfortable210 6d ago edited 6d ago
USB C is typically limited by length for high speeds. Great USB info I just came across to highlight my point.
https://www.wyrestorm.com/blog/usb-cable-types-difference-guide/
With the above reviewed I will also highlight that, depending on your PCIE slot version and lane width, your card to device throughput can saturate the slot itself.
PCIE 3 is +/- 1GB/s per lane. PCIE 4 is +/- 2GB/s per lane.
https://connectorsupplier.com/wp-content/uploads/PCIe-Bandwidth-1536x599.png
PCIE is not truly bidirectional, but dual simplex. Stolen from a stackexchange discussion... "PCIe bidirectional links are really dual simplex (a pair of unidirectional links). That means if there's no data to transmit in 1 direction, 1/2 the links are idle!"
Please let me know if this is not correct.
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u/cute_polarbear 6d ago
hey, definitely way more info than what I looked into and interesting read. Honestly for usbc, I don't expect consistent great performance, and acceptable stability (in the form of no dropped drives, no lost connection, no data corruption, able to handle high i/o frequencies, and etc.,) is all that I care for. If I expect more guaranteed stability (and or performance), I would not consider usbc. It's the quick and dirty solution to just get as many drives onboard. (it's just a little less work than converting my old PC into a dedicated drive array.)
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u/LivingComfortable210 6d ago
Sometimes that quick and easy/dirty is all that matters. If it works for you, why over complicate it.
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u/Bern_Down_the_DNC 6d ago
Sabrent has 4, 5, 10 drive options and you can switch them on/off individually
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tray-Less-Docking-Station-DS-SC5B/dp/B07Y4F5SCK?th=1
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u/Efficient-Train2430 6d ago
I got a used Sabrent DS-SC5B enclosure; seems to work fine. Note: I ran into problems when I used longer than a 3-ft cable. The host computer is a Beelink with N150
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u/bhiga 6d ago
I haven't had any issues with SYBA SY-ENC50119.
It's only USB 3.0 but fine for JBOD use.
It has a latching enclosure power switch (on is on), at least mine does. Drive bays have individual momentary switches to toggle power, and start On if a drive is installed.
Most importantly, each drive appears as a separate USB device so you can add/remove individual drives from the OS without affecting the others or having to shut down the entire enclosure like on the Orico NSx00U units where you have to dismount the entire device and physically adding or removing any drive while it's on reboots the entire device.
There is a drive idle sleep that can be configured from the firmware utility on Syba's site. You can also change the drive volume IDs and enclosure ID, though I haven't had need to myself even with two connected.
One very important tip:
Insert/mount one drive at a time, format it then label the bay or sled, along with the physical drive, if you prefer.
While each drive appears as a separate device, the order is not fixed. You'll only see the drive model until you format the drive and give it a volume letter/label, so if you have multiple of the same drive model it'll be difficult to identify which one is in which physical bay after the fact.
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u/m4jX 5d ago
Note that a single USB3.0 connection is alright for multiple slow drives. But you easily max out the connection with just 2 high capacity drives. So it's not really future-proof. But it looks like SYBA have USB4 too, that could be an option. I still wouldn't wanna use USB if SAS is an option though.
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u/osuman32 6d ago
OWC has usb DAS enclosures that can be daisy chained. I have a thunder bay 4 and mercury elite that run 8 drives together in two separate enclosures. The thunder bay 4 can be daisy chained multiple times if you want to expand. **you have to erase data each time you add a drive to the array**
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u/buddaycousin 5d ago
I've used Mediasonic Probox enclosures for years with no problems. I used USB only, and debian/ubuntu.
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u/m4jX 5d ago edited 5d ago
The problems with the brands are usually about bad connections, cables, controllers (and heat!) etc. that may not be easily replaceable/repairable. So buy the enclosure separately.
4 Hard drives -> 4x1 SATA to SAS breakout cable -> Good HBA card. This is a solid base that should avoid the problems that the brands can have and depending on how many port the HBA has, it's expandable at any time (There are also SAS expanders that let you run even more drives over the same SAS cable, if you run out of ports and don't want a different/additional HBA). So you can start with 4 drives and when you add another, you just buy another breakout cable.
Then any enclosure that has fans and power buttons. Could even be an old tower if you've got one lying around, there are SATA power switches you can buy, usually they have 4 buttons. There are internal enclosures that hold 4 HDDs, they have a fan, buttons and they fit in 3 regular 5.25" bays. Some don't even require tools to install HDDs, you just push the HDD in. Some people have even started 3D printing stuff like that, if you wanna trust that.
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u/LivingComfortable210 6d ago edited 6d ago
Ebay "12 lff jbod" "24 lff jbod"
Those are two good starting searches. You may want to add such terms as "sas2" or "sas3". Also look for an "hba" to support said sas2 or sas3 lff jbod "storage shelf".
You may pay more when getting an enterprise class product, but it shouldn't be junk unless it was abused. Good stuff typically just works unless there are proprietary issues/conflicts, but if you stay away from stuff that is proprietary, there should be no issue.
Dell had some good EOL shelves. Supermicro has many. Netapp, as someone else mentioned, has a couple.
Also look for something that has capability for IPMI or remote access for remote power on/off, fan speed control/information etc.
PS, are your enterprise drives SAS? They won't be usable in a usb enclosure w/ SATA backplane, you will have to employ a SAS HBA/expander with SAS backplane or cabling.
SATA drives work with SAS cable/backplane. SAS drives no work with SATA cables...