I've just had a DS-1515+ fail on me. Likely due to the Atom 2000 bug.
So, I'm intrigued by the idea of installing XPEnology on a mini PC that either has an eSATA connector on the motherboard, or, a USB-CTM connector with a USB-C to eSATA cable. This *should* allow me to plug an expander into the mini PC, and then hopefully, to hang another expander off the back of that. I'm looking at approx $150 to get a mini PC and a couple of hundred dollars to get another expander chassis for the drives in my DS-1515+.
Sample PC chassis would be an HP Elitedesk 800 G3 Mini with:
i5-7500T or possibly i5 8500T (max 35W)
256GB NVMe (for caching)
2.5" SSD for XPEnology
a Thumb drive for booting
8GB RAM which I might upgrade to 16GB
The documentation and guides I have seen here look great, however, I've not seen anything which talks about the kind of build I'm looking to do.
Do y'all think that this would work? Would XPEnology recognize a DX-517 expander on a PCIe eSATA connection? How about one on a USB-C to eSATA cable?
Also, I'm going to use the NAS as a media server (Jellyfin) which may be doing transcoding. Would the upgraded UHD 630 graphics chipset offer a noticeable advantage over the HD 630 chipset in the 7500T? I would expect to be serving up native 4K video files at 4K and down resolutions.
Thanks for any info you can provide!
