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?
In my experience, noooooo.
I’ve had too many momentary disconnects with USB devices to trust that on a 24/7 server.
An early server I built had a large USB backup drive for a RAID5 array and every month there was usually something that went wrong.
I’ve been doing USB with raid on several servers for 10 years. No random disconnects.
Why though?
Because I have a total of 28 drives and it works really well and is flexible.
12 of them are in a Synology though
Sata extension cards aren’t expensive you should know.
USB-storage isn’t reliable.
Period.
ANY fscking thing that bumps any connection, can break the dam link.
Then your kernel can re-label the device when it re-connects,
and you’ve got to reassemble your RAID.
just my experience.
use ANY other method you can, other than USB.
stick a SATA adaptor on there somewhere, if you can.
Get a different motherboard.
ANYthing, but not USB.
Always use /dev/disk/* (I use by-id) for RAID, as those links will stay constant even if a disk is renamed (for example, from sdb to sdd).
You are quite likely to regret going down this route. Should do what you have to to get the drives properly connected.
