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Is it possible to use an USB disk as an Internal One ?


pkdick1

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Hello everyone,

 

I installed XPENOLOGY on an ASROCK J4150-ITX board very easily thanks to the differents advices given on this forum. I would like to use the USB 3.1 internal connector of my board to plug an NVME SSD and to use it as an internal disk to store the DSM software: after reinstallation I found that it is installed as an external USB disk that I can only used for backup.

 

Is it possible to adjust the internal configuration of XPENOLOGY in order to declare this disk as an internal one? So I could move all my system files on it ?

 

Thank you in advance for your support.

 

Best regards,

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It is possible to hack a USB-connected disk and treat it as an internal disk so that it may be assigned to a Storage Pool, but it is not a Synology-supported configuration (upgrades can fail) and it is some work to get the external USB disk to be usable but not also your loader USB.

https://xpenology.com/forum/topic/9412-max-10-drives-in-dsm-61/?tab=comments#comment-80569

 

You can't install DSM to a specific disk per se, DSM installs itself to every disk that is assigned to a Storage Pool.  There is a way to suppress DSM I/O on specific disks, but that would not apply to your two-disk configuration.

 

This is a little bit semantic, but be advised that NVMe SSD is not supported for regular disk by DSM - only cache device on DS918+.  But with a USB to NVMe adapter, DSM will not recognize it as NVMe and it should work for the above scenario on any DSM platform.

 

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On 10/30/2020 at 11:08 AM, pkdick1 said:

ASROCK J4150-ITX

whats with the pcie slot (one pcie lane available)?

 

if we get more tricky, there are M.2 to PCIe slot adapters ($25-50, i have one for testing around since last week but no time to give it a thorough test with xxTB transfers) , your M.2 slot has a least one lane (500MB/s) maybe two

with that you can add ahci controllers with 2 to 6 ports each (even 8 or 10 if you want an choose the right one)

there are pcie 1x cards with the asm1166 chip and 6 ports, its up to you how many ports you want to squeeze through the 500MB/s of the one pcie lane of you pcie 16x slot (more the two drives will limit the drives in speed but drives will work, just slower for each individual drive) and when using the M.2 too you have 2x500MB/s or maybe 3x500MB/s

the over all speed in network will be of no concern as the nic has just 1G and thats 110MB/s max you can use over network

 

mangling a usb drive into the internal drives should be really the last resort and will make the whole thing prone to brake and will give you headaches for sure when updating (broken raid after update that needs to be repaired)

 

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Thanks you for your answers. After a search within the forum, I eventually found a way to modify the synoinfo.conf files in order to force xpenology to recognize my USB NVME SSD as an internal device. I understand that this modification is not fully safe and maybe destroyed after a system update, but as I bought a network pci-e card with link aggregation capability, and a M2 to sata card (to replace the SSD option of the DS 918+), this was the only possibility that was remaining...

Best regards and thanks you again for your support!

Envoyé de mon ONEPLUS A3003 en utilisant Tapatalk

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On 11/2/2020 at 1:02 PM, pkdick1 said:

this was the only possibility that was remaining...

no, not really, you could extend on the M.2 to have more disks (even a 8 port lsi sas controller is possible to use 4 pcie 2.0 lanes if they are available on the M.2 slot, making it 2000MB/s for added disks), it just takes a few bugs to do so, its not technical impossibility

 

https://www.amazon.com/ADT-LINK-Extension-Express-Extender-R42SF/dp/B08DRDT47K
https://www.amazon.com/NGFF-Extension-Cable-90%C2%B0Right-Angle/dp/B08B3KGNHC
https://www.amazon.com/Timack-NGFF-NVMe-Extension-Cable/dp/B08BXNGKGH

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Dear IG-88,

 

Thank you indeed for your support!

 

However, in respect to my motherboard manual, I read that my M2 slot is a key E model (initially designed for a Wifi extension card), so if I am not misunderstanding the M2 standard (that you already described in a previous post where you referred to https://www.delock.com/infothek/M.2/M.2_e.html), I think that I cannot really use any of the possibilities that you propose (as they do not appear to be physically compatible).

 

In my current configuration, my USB NVME SSD is now considered as an internal device, but I am in the process to procure another USB adapter: the SSD's speed is here again limited to 270 Mb/s where I tested it using an USB 3.1 plug (on another computer) to 1000 Mb/s. Hopefully the new adapter that is suppsed to aggregate two USB 3.0, will give better performance (https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/4000144181860.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.86966c37SRPE9R).

 

Best regards,

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2 hours ago, pkdick1 said:

opefully the new adapter that is supped to aggregate two USB 3.0, will give better performance (https://fr.aliexpress.com/item/4000144181860.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.86966c37SRPE9R).

the connector on this adapter is for usb 3.1 gen2, the adapter is meant to be used when your housing comes with usb 3.1 gen2 (10GBit) connectors and you want to connect that to usb 3.0 aka 3.1 gen1 (5GBit) - why not using a normal breakout connector with normal usb 3,0 and a short cable to a slot on the back

the added adapter can not be beneficial

 

key e adapters seem to be much harder and it would be needed to be used with a additional adapter (small pcb version) key m to pcie 4x slot

https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-NGFF-NVME-WiFi-Cable/dp/B07DZF1W55/

https://www.amazon.com/MintCell-Adapter-MOLEX-Power-Cable/dp/B073KZW1ZC/

or

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001188530306.html

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000805869245.html

 

but that gets a little far fetched maybe (and should be tested to work reliable, and we dont know if the key e slot really has two pcie lanes)

 

when using usb to connect you should have at least one disk redundancy and you should consider connecting the power of the external usb enclosure (12V?) to the internal psu or use 2.5" disks that dont depend on external power source (backup of important data might be a good idea too)

and make a huge sticking label to it to never update dsm with a reference to your documentation because in 1-2 years you might have no clue how you did

 

Edited by IG-88
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1 hour ago, pkdick1 said:

I  understand my mistake, but I do not get why using an internal USB 3.1 gen1 connector, I cannot get a speed better than 270 mb/s for a SSD rated 1000 MB/s...

i thougt you where planning to connect 1-x usb disks

if its about a nvme on the m.2 key e then you can use the two canditates from above to convert it to m.2 key m, that way you might be able to use two lanes and reach 1000MB/s

https://www.amazon.com/Sintech-NGFF-NVME-WiFi-Cable/dp/B07DZF1W55/

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4001188530306.html

 

edit: maybe not so good, when really connected as nvme you won't be able to use it as internal disk, then the only option is cache

 

Edited by IG-88
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Hi IG-88,

 

What I really want is to use the M.2 socket from my Asrock J4105 board, in order to use two SATA SSDs for cache and to use a NVME SSD for the SYNOLOGY applications storage.

You gave me some possible explanations for this overall low performance. By the way I think that your last proposal will not give a better SSD performance as the only interface for the proposed adapter is NGFF whose performance is similar to SATA. Could it be some specific device driver concerns that may give such results ?

 

Thank you anyway for your commitment !

 

Best regards

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