Reply to: Choosing a 2.5" HDD Caddy

[courtg9000]

Out of interest, what's the PI NAS write performance like?

I dont have any issues 4 x 12TB seagate red. RAID1.
Not seen any problems in the logs and I do check from time to time

[Protagoras]

The 7200rpm disk has been running in one of these cheap caddies for 5 days, no problem so far. The caddy has 2 USB connections to provide power.

I jinxed it! One stopped working a couple of hours ago, but resumed when I unplugged it and plugged it in again.

[Protagoras]

Out of interest, what's the PI NAS write performance like?

[courtg9000]

I've not had a chat with them, since I've got no problem with PIs.

I've got a small portfolio of PIs mostly running IOT servers - Mosquitto, NodeRed, Sqllite - but also PiHole, and UPS management etc across a few locations.

I seldom reboot them and they just keep going. The only challenge I ever have is with SD card failures. I've tried numerous brands, but in the end gave up and went for external spinning disks for databases since I had them in the spares box.

I use SanDisk Extrmes on mine and not had a problem, my "webserver01" gets hammered with a beefy Nextcloud instance, a wordpress mule and some other stuff. Hasn't missed a beat. "webserver02" is probably going Home Assistant at some point and 03 is housing a prototype. I bought the Pi Nas kit and it works a treat. The TV/gaming box has a 5TB WD usb drive attached again, never missing a beat.

[Protagoras]

As its for a Pi have you tried having a proper chat with Pimoroni or The Pi Hut.
Customer Service from those guys has been excellent in my opinion whenever I have had a query regarding my Raspberry Pi "server estate"
Yeah "server estate" is a bit rich for 3 webservers a NAS and a questionable TV/Gaming Rig

I've not had a chat with them, since I've got no problem with PIs.

I've got a small portfolio of PIs mostly running IOT servers - Mosquitto, NodeRed, Sqllite - but also PiHole, and UPS management etc across a few locations.

I seldom reboot them and they just keep going. The only challenge I ever have is with SD card failures. I've tried numerous brands, but in the end gave up and went for external spinning disks for databases since I had them in the spares box.

[courtg9000]

As its for a Pi have you tried having a proper chat with Pimoroni or The Pi Hut.
Customer Service from those guys has been excellent in my opinion whenever I have had a query regarding my Raspberry Pi "server estate"
Yeah "server estate" is a bit rich for 3 webservers a NAS and a questionable TV/Gaming Rig

[woody1]

I thought that eMMC was being phased out by manufacturers in favour of SSDs , especially for higher end products - how old is your laptop?

A couple of years or so (it came with Win11). It's only a low-end ASUS.

[Protagoras]

Laptops these days don't seem to use HDDs anymore. Mine has eMMC. Is that likely to fail like SD/SSD at some point?

I thought that eMMC was being phased out by manufacturers in favour of SSDs , especially for higher end products - how old is your laptop?

I've seen SD cards trashed by excessive writes, SSDs by dodgy power supplies.
Last year I found and spun up a SCSI HDD not used since the 1990s and it was still working. It remains to be seen whether that's possible with consumer grade SSDs.

Top end SSDs are used widely in servers and storage arrays and from what I've seen the failure rate is extremely low. Of course, in such environments, there's no data loss from multiple disk failures anyway. These are naturally reassuringly expensive!

It's possible to read the wear level from many drives - including eMMC - to help with estimating life expectancy, but at the end of the day, we still make backups.

[Protagoras]

The 7200rpm disk has been running in one of these cheap caddies for 5 days, no problem so far. The caddy has 2 USB connections to provide power.

[sadkingbilly]

Yep.



I've ordered a couple of Caddies from Amazon that are specified for disks up to 5400rpm which hopefully will work with my 7200rpm spare disks. Raspberry PIs have 4 USB ports and so I prefer to power the disk from the PI and simplifies startup and shutdown although most these run 24*7.

In an ideal world I'd find USB stick to use for the databases since DB files are small, but the number of writes is such that the ones I've tried only last a few months. Curiously, old small capacity sticks lasted longer than newer, larger ones.

ah, i assumed PC connx. maybe Pi has lower power to USB? i know not.

[woody1]

In an ideal world I'd find USB stick to use for the databases since DB files are small, but the number of writes is such that the ones I've tried only last a few months. Curiously, old small capacity sticks lasted longer than newer, larger ones.

Even just using USB sticks for backups, music, films, I've found they don't last that long. Currently using a SanDisk one which seems to be holding up.

Laptops these days don't seem to use HDDs anymore. Mine has eMMC. Is that likely to fail like SD/SSD at some point?

[Protagoras]

i've got several single USB caddy's, using SSD's AND HDD's, no problems, but i only use them for backups (<>1TB) so not continuously.

That's interesting. I did get a M2 SSD and put that in a caddy with single power lead, but it proved unreliable, frequently losing connection. It does, of course, work perfectly as a backup device.

[Protagoras]

So... you want to buy a HDD and chuck it in some kind of housing to connect it to your computer?

Yep.

The ones I've used have always had external power rather than dual USB for power and data. For me, that was more convenient as an extra socket is easier to manage than multiple USB ports.

I've ordered a couple of Caddies from Amazon that are specified for disks up to 5400rpm which hopefully will work with my 7200rpm spare disks. Raspberry PIs have 4 USB ports and so I prefer to power the disk from the PI and simplifies startup and shutdown although most these run 24*7.

In an ideal world I'd find USB stick to use for the databases since DB files are small, but the number of writes is such that the ones I've tried only last a few months. Curiously, old small capacity sticks lasted longer than newer, larger ones.

[ladymuck]

So... you want to buy a HDD and chuck it in some kind of housing to connect it to your computer?

The ones I've used have always had external power rather than dual USB for power and data. For me, that was more convenient as an extra socket is easier to manage than multiple USB ports.

[sadkingbilly]

i've got several single USB caddy's, using SSD's AND HDD's, no problems, but i only use them for backups (<>1TB) so not continuously.