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Yes, and you might want to ask in the datahoarders community.
While I dont use a mini-pc, I have a server with 48TB in it on spinning disks, and I've built a hybrid DAS/NAS that I back up to.
I use this 4-bay DAS: https://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/d/B078YQHWYW I chose it because it supports USB 3.2 Gen 2 and I've been pretty happy with it.
It's usually plugged into my server directly, and I use ZFS to snapshot and send to it. However, I also can plug it into a Pi5 and use ZFS send over SSH to treat it like a NAS. The Pi can of course run Samba/CIFS and SSH for sshfs.
The biggest downside to this structure is probably the metadata speeds for ZFS over USB (looking up snapshot names), but you could always use a cache drive with ZFS.
I highly, highly recommend ZFS and figuring out your software requirements before picking hardware.
Happy to answer any specific questions, too.
Reviews on that page are kind of dodgy, but they are for all 3 products listed which makes it difficult to tell which review is for what.
Have you had any of the listed issues? Heat, unrecognized success, etc?
To follow up on this, I just used it in a 72F room, and the drives hit 60C. So heat is an issue, I've just never run into it before.
None.
I think the unrecognized issues are because people think it will behave like a device with a controller vs just USB pass-through. Every disk I've plugged in just shows up fine on the host. I also have only used it with linux.
As for heat, my drives go to sleep when not in use, but even for long stints of backups it wasn't an issue.
Reviews for just the 4-bay: https://www.amazon.com/product-reviews/B078YQHWYW?formatType=current_format&pageNumber=1
Thanks for the reply! I have a couple USB 3.0 2-drive docks that just sit out in the open - consolidating in to a single, enclosed unit with a fan would be nice (since mine or open, you really hear the HD spin up/click when accessing it).
What do you use to adjust your drives' spin down? hdparm? hd-idle? I have one drive that is constantly spinning/accessed so the thermal concerns with the unit do weigh on me.
Oh man it's been a while, but I think I used hdparm. They basically show up as individual USB drives and were SMART capable.
The DAS is disconnected now for a road test (this system will eventually live in a van), but once I reconnect it I could check if you would like.
If it crosses your mind once it's all hooked up :-)
So see my other comment on the heat above, but
smartctlandhdparmboth work great with it. For this warm room I've stuck a fan in front and temps stay below 40C so far.Have you had data loss occurences in these bay enclosures? Some other commenters have said, that using it as a primary storage is really risky because some crappy controllers could ruin the drives's data for example.
I have not, but I also run it as a RAIDZ, so if I did have issues with one, the parity should cover it. That being said it is a backup for me.
Yes there is someone talking everybody down about USB enclosures*.
Maybe he got burned or something...
Can say never had an issue and I replaced many motherboards over 20 years, and also many enclosures.
Don't go too cheap, but don't worry too much. I highly recommend a raid setup anyway. And always do backups, bit this is unrelated to USB specifically