Direct-attached storage for a Mac Mini?

[Multicore]

I'm considering switching back to from PC to Mac. I no longer need a high-spec workstation so a Mac Mini would do except for the file system storage capacity.

My current PC has 8 drives and 4 of them are configured in a large redundant pool with offering about 12T for use. This is a good arrangement, easy to manage. It's what I do with Linux servers too. I don't trust HW RAID controllers and don't want to have to manage them (they have their own "BIOS" with "interesting" CLI). The performance of pooling/redundancy provided by the OS file system is fine. I also don't want to run a storage server (NAS) because a) it's yet another computer on the network to tend to, b) I already have what I need for media sharing on the home network, c) we use Backblaze for remote backups and will have to pay extra for that.

Mac Mini at present comes with these Thunderbolt/USB-C ports.

One option, I suppose, is to use two of those ports and attach a simple USB storage device to each and run as a volume in an APFS container. Is this option available in Mac Minis? man diskutil suggests so.

Downside here is I'd like to upgrade from rotating to NVMe. With only two devices I'll lose capacity relative to my current 12T arrangement. Is there such a thing as an enclosure for several NVMe with controller that presents them to the host as JBOD over a Thunderbolt 5 120 Gb/s? e.g. five 4TB M.2 sticks in an enclosure with one Thunderbolt 5 connector? Such a thing shouldn't need management except perhaps for FW update. In the past when I tried using multi-device enclosures the controllers were kinda crap and not reassuring. But if it's JBOD and I have also Backblaze I could reconsider.

 

[voodooless]

Yes, you can buy Thunderbolt docks with multiple NVMe options. Thunderbolt 5 is already an option, but the older spec should be more than fast enough for most use cases.

Something like this:

OWC ThunderBlade X12 - The Fastest and Highest Capacity Production Shuttle and Editing RAID SSD in the Universe

Work faster and smarter. Achieve speeds up to 6600MB/s, storage capacities up to 96TB, fanless chassis, and SoftRAID for advanced RAID control.

www.owc.com

It's not cheap

 

[Multicore]

OWC. I remember buying stuff from OWC back in the days that I used Apple hardware. I think we even got some memory sticks from OWC for an old Apple laptop dearly beloved used. Cool stuff.

Yeah, prices are a bit ouch. Makes me reconsider the strategy. In the past I didn't worry too much about deleting old data to make space as I'd just add capacity. That's gonna cost if I also want it to be NVMe.

 

[voodooless]

Do you really need 120 Gbps? Even 10 Gbps is usually fast enough. You’ll have many more options then. You can even put SATA SSDs in a USB enclosure, for much less money. Lots of options for those.

 

[Multicore]

I probably can get by with 10 Gbps. The rotating SATA HDDs I'm using now are tolerable if noticeably sluggish compared to the other devices. The cost of the high end NVMe/Thunderbolt stuff is a bit much.

 

[voodooless]

I’m running a 2 drive mirror with enterprise 18TB SATA disks, connected via USB-C to my file server. I get close to 800 MBsec over 10Gb Ethernet to my MacBook. Plenty fast

For a cheaper solution look at something like this:

Acasis 4 Bay 40Gbps M.2 NVMe RAID SSD Enclosure Compatible with Thunderbolt 4/3

40Gbps transfer speed, ensuring instant access to your editing and design materials with zero wait time.- Read SSD×1: Up to 27Gbps (MAX)- Read SSD×4: Up to 16Gbps (MAX) per drive Supports software RAID array configuration, with each bay accommodating SSDs up to 8TB. When connecting four...

www.acasis.com

OWC Express 4M2: DIY Four-Slot USB4 NVMe M.2 SSD Enclosure

Build a desktop high-performance RAID with your choice of NVMe M.2 SSDs and get up to 3200MB/s performance with USB4, Thunderbolt, and USB-C Macs and PCs.

www.owc.com

JEYI 40Gbps USB 4.0 M.2 NVMe SSD Enclosure M2 To Type-c 4.0 Solid State Drive Case Compatible with Thunderbolt 4/3 ASM2464 USB 3.2/3.1/3

40Gbps Omnispeed: The JEYI ASM2464 NVMe Enclosure 40G transforms your M.2 NVMe SSD into a compact and portable mobile hard drive enclosure. It features a USB4.0 Type-C output interface, supporting a maximum transmission speed of up to 40Gbps. Equipped with the latest ASM2464 chip, it is...

www.jeyi.com

 

[Multicore]

I spent some more time looking at the options yesterday. Thanks for your input @voodooless .

Turns out another factor is noise. Compact enclosures for multiple storage devices have fans. I'm not sure about having that on my desk. That tilts the equation towards NAS so I can put the box elsewhere.

And a factor I didn't mention above is energy use. I feel guilt about adding another computer to the household just to be a file server. And my current arrangement with 4 SATA disks in the PC case burns less than a NAS, I'd wager. The disks spin down automatically when not used and power off when the system sleeps (20 min timer). A Synology with an Intel server chip and ECC memory, otoh... I already feel guilt about not turning off my RPi media server when I'm not using it. I turn off lights I'm not using.

I remain suspicious of any multi-device direct-attach enclosure that offers RAID even if it supports a JBOD mode. (RAID in reputable NAS brands is a different matter.) I'd prefer the host be presented with multiple USB storage devices.

Which brings us back to do, re, mi. Two 3.5" HDDs occupying two of the Thunderbolt ports on the Mini Mac.

 

[voodooless]

I remain suspicious of any multi-device direct-attach enclosure that offers RAID even if it supports a JBOD mode. (RAID in reputable NAS brands is a different matter.) I'd prefer the host be presented with multiple USB storage devices.

Why? JBOD mode is basically just like having the NVME drives directly attached via PCIe. You can simply transplant the driver to some other case and still access your data.

As for noise, some of these have no fans, like the JEYI. Given the load these drives usually get, that should not be a real issue.

 

[SHB]

Let me echo that creating some JBODs with OWC boxes should most likely work very well.

Drop them a line to see what they think. Their customer service is excellent and the products are top notch.

 

[Multicore]

Why? JBOD mode is basically just like having the NVME drives directly attached via PCIe. You can simply transplant the driver to some other case and still access your data.

In principle, yes. In practice RAID controllers are hard to engineer so that they don't introduce failure modes. I've witnessed my own work on an enterprise RAID get lost when the controller itself corrupted the data on the disks. I've operated a few 3coms that gave me the willies. And I think the adoption of stuff like ZFS (BTRFS, APFS, ReFS...) suggests I'm not alone in preferring the host take on these tasks. There's a lot of other nice tricks these FSs bring too.

As for noise, some of these have no fans, like the JEYI. Given the load these drives usually get, that should not be a real issue.

I agree it shouldn't be. I can keep looking. Thanks for mentioning JEYI.

 

[Multicore]

To be fair, an advantage to using RAID in the enclosure to present one storage device to the host is to make the thing portable between hosts, e.g. moving some media files from desktop to laptop. I don't feel confident doing that with a JBOD set up with AppleRAID. Maybe it works, idk. Today I read that there's a framework for running PHP in the browser using WASM. And given enough thrust pigs fly just fine.

 

[voodooless]

I know the feeling .

I think with https://openzfsonosx.org/ you should be able to build a reliable setup, even over multiple separate enclosures.