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Doability question - NUC 8i5 + External USB3 3.5" HDDs


ChriKn

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Hi there,
After some years of using an Odroid HC2 with OMV and multiple Dockers (Plex / pihole / OpenHAB), it struck me : I need a better backup solution than a small Nextcloud on a rented server for the most urgent work stuff and backing up once every now and then (both PCs crashing at the same time surely helped)

As the new 11th Gen NUCs seem to come to market I found an opportunity to get the 8th gen ones for rather cheap. They seem quite perfect (ambivalent if I should chosse to expand / change stuff, small, power efficient, quiet), sadly they dont come with an option to connect 3.5" HDDs.

 

I was playing around with the idea of using Nextcloud, but I want my folders to feel organic on my pc, not have everything synced everyday to a folder and uploaded, feels wrong. So Synology and their backup software seems to be an ideal candidate, but wow those prices for such lame hardware...

So here is the question : is it (somewhat easily) doable to instal DSM on a NUC and get an external USB3 dual-bay enclosure to work with it ?
(I was thinking about the easy to find "toaster"-devices, but feel free to recommend something)

My idea would be m.2 for the system, 2,5 inch 1 TB SSD for constant updates of Work stuff (what I do with a distant Nextcloud right now) and external USB HDDs for the digitized movies to use on plex and archived stuff...

If someone knows about a mini-pc which looks nice in an office environment and does sip on power, I'm also all in, hasn't to be a NUC...

 

Hoping to see some ideas from you and maybe join the bunch soon !
Thanks

 

 

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Best results are with native SATA connections.  USB drives can be hacked in, but it is fragile. You cannot easily use M.2 NVMe for "system" - DSM naturally installs to all SATA disk devices and M.2 NVMe is reserved for optional SSD cache unless virtualize your SSD or go through some significant further hacks.

 

Remember the real value of DSM is the value-added features over basic file sharing - redundancy, self healing, replication etc which require proper access to SATA hardware.  If all you need is file sharing, your proposal is the hard way to do it.

 

The most effective XPe hardware solutions are platforms that look a lot like the native Synology hardware.

Edited by flyride
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2 hours ago, ChriKn said:

If someone knows about a mini-pc which looks nice in an office environment and does sip on power, I'm also all in, hasn't to be a NUC...

as nuc's usually only have 1 sata and no room for 2x 2.5" hdd/ssd its not a good platform

m.2 ssd can only be used as cache (one just read, two r/w) and with a 1GBit nic and its limit to 112MB/s its kind of pointless to sink money into that as the nic will be the bottleneck most of the time

 

maybe a barebone with 2x2.5"?

https://www.shuttle.eu/en/products/slim/xh310r/

https://www.shuttle.eu/en/products/slim/xh310rv/

 

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Thanks a lot for these ideas / answers.
Good to know the m.2 won't work as I thought it would.


The shuttles are not bad ideas, but pricy in comparison to what a NUC 8i5 would be...

Ideally something like the Kobol Helios64 with an intel/AMD Processor would be simply amazing, funny this has never been done...
Or did I miss something maybe ?

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6 minutes ago, ChriKn said:

Ideally something like the Kobol Helios64 with an intel/AMD Processor would be simply amazing, funny this has never been done...
Or did I miss something maybe ?

 

ARM won't work for XPEnology, no loader support for non-Intel.  But plenty of people have done low-cost ITX based hotswappable NAS chassis.  I personally use the U-NAS 410 and 810, but many choices on the market.

Edited by flyride
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3 minutes ago, flyride said:

 

ARM won't work for XPEnology, no loader support for non-Intel.  But plenty of people have done low-cost ITX based hotswappable NAS chassis.  I personally use the U-NAS 410 and 810 myself, but many choices on the market.


I know, that's why I spoke about a Intel/AMD-Version

Regarding U-Nas, sadly they don't seem to sell them in my region (Western Europe), that's why I forgot about them...

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