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?

  • NaibofTabrEnglish
    6•1 month ago

    I plan to RAID1 them and use them as boot drives

    This will not work unless the mainboard is handling the RAID control in firmware. If you are doing software RAID then the OS must boot before the array can be accessed.

    If you just want to set up a NAS, you can get a used PowerEdge tower for very little money, and it will work a lot better than what you have planned.

    • @anon2963OPEnglish
      2•1 month ago

      In the past I have used Proxmox with ZFS raid on a basic mini PC. With ZFS raid it syncs everything except /boot. Proxmox has a tool called “proxmox-boot-tool-refresh” which will syncs /boot between drives. ZFS kernel module can be loaded in the initramfs so it will boot fine, even if missing a drive.

      For this project I do not plan to use ZFS, but AFAIK software raid is now standard. Here is a popular video from Level1Techs talking about the flaws of hardware RAID: https://youtu.be/l55GfAwa8RI