this post was submitted on 23 Oct 2023
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Has anyone tried to turn an old Mainboard into a NAS/ Raid capable Server using Hard drives? I recently thought about this and now I wanted to know if someone has already tried that.

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a reason you're suspecting it wouldn't work? I've got a 4-disk ZFS array running on a ThinkCentre 715 via 3 USB 3.0 ports. Works great. I assume a framework board in the CM case should perform even better given its USB ports are better.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Is there a reason you're suspecting it wouldn't work?

No, not really. I was just wondering if that works too. I have an old PC with stand in my room and I must urgently upgrade the memory. For this I wanted to use hard drives, because they are cheaper.
I've been playing with the idea of getting something like a NAS for a while. And because I always find DIY cool I was wondering if others have already tried it with a framework.

I didn't consider that you can use the USB ports to connect hard drives. In my naivety I only thought about SATA ports.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Yeah, USB 3+ has way more bandwidth than needed by a single or even multiple disks at full tilt. If you want more than 1 disk and are familiar with Linux, hook up your disks to it, slap a ZFS pool on it and you're golden. Ubuntu has built-in support for ZFS.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago (1 children)

That would be possible but IMO it would be better to sell that fairly new mainboard. I would use an older machine you have laying around or a Raspberry Pi for that, as you probably don't need the computing power of the FW for it.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

I currently using an old pc as a server and I'm not planning to use a framework mainboard for a nas. I just wondered if others already tried such a thing

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I'm using my 11th gen mainboard as a proxmox host, but the USB NIC I have is very unreliable. I ordered a M.2 intel based NIC and hopefully this will work better.