I have been searching and learning a bunch but there doesn’t really seem to be any good methods that I can find.
You would think more companies would be putting out DAS considering the capabilities of USB3.2 and Thunderbolt. I have been looking for a quality DAS but almost all of them don’t have built in hardware RAID. I don’t really trust software RAID. Mostly rebuilding if the software crashes or my hardware crashes. Even if I was ok going with soft RAID, almost every model has a huge flaw.
It feels like getting a NAS is the only real way to go and basically just using it as an ethernet DAS for my server. It just seems like a waste of a processor. Should I just build a DAS with 4 Bay Rack? Then I have to find a place to mount a PSU and tidy up one of those PCIe to 4 Sata boards and PCIe to USB board as well as a couple fans.
Is there a good cheap enclosure to just install 4 HDD, a couple boards and a PSU? Am I missing some other easy option? It just feels like the market now is to buy a NAS and use it as a DAS.
There’s not a lot of demand for hardware RAID for only four drives. Hardware RAID in general is becoming less popular, and since many people can just stuff four more drives into an existing case… stuff like USB enclosures are often seen as "good enough’ (though options do exist)
With options like ZFS being super popular in the enterprise (and homelab), what are your concerns with software RAID? I find it offers more flexible recovery options, more config options in general, works with SSDs better, and is faster.