I have an 11th gen Framework mainboard which I would like to repurpose as a server. Unfortunately, (unless I do some super janky stuff) I can only connect 1 drive to it over M.2 and any additional ones must be over USB.

I am thinking of just using some portable hard drives and plugging them in over USB. I plan to RAID1 them and use them as boot drives and data storage, and use the M.2 slot for something unrelated.

In your experiences, is USB reliable enough nowadays to run a RAID array for a server like this? If it is, does it depend on the specific drive used?

  • lemmyvoreEnglish
    5•6 months ago

    The big factor is the chip make in the USB enclosure/adapter. Realtek is most reliable, followed by Asmedia. JMicron is garbage (will get hot and drop connection).

    What’s your goal by using RAID1? Do you really need redundancy — keep the system alive if the main drive good down?

    If you only need backup then you don’t need RAID, and that should fare much better — just take an incremental snapshot to the USB drive periodically and let it sleep the rest of the time.