The original post: /r/datahoarder by /u/tibbon on 2025-02-10 06:28:38.
I have around 10 USB Western Digital drives here, 12-18TB each. I was trying to use them for file shares, but they just weren't stable enough all sharing a few USB ports on my Intel Nuc, and I kept worrying about data loss.
I also have a Dell R820 server, which seems far more suitable to the task of being a killer NAS.
I'm thinking of getting a LSI 8300-8e or similar HBA controller with IT mode support, putting it in the R820, getting some SAS/SATA JBOD enclosure (EMC, Supermicro, etc) off eBay, and then shucking all of the Western Digital drives I have, and putting them into a ZFS (raid-z2) and making that a big file share mount. I have a full server rack that's only 1/3 full, so I don't mind a relatively large JBOD as long as it isn't terribly power inefficient.
I'm not doing a ton of high speed operations on it, except copying around files for video/audio editing, and perhaps watching movies from a Plex server or similar.
Does this plan likely work out? What difficulties am I going to encounter? Any suggestions on HBA cards or cheap JBODs?