eSATA Expansion

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jturnley
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Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2016 2:14 am

eSATA Expansion

Post by jturnley »

Hey all, I'm new (hi!), and am about to pull the trigger on an ASUSTOR, probably an AS5004T. I have a question about external storage that I haven't been able to get a 100% clear answer on. Can you attach an eSATA JBOD appliance (say, a SANS DIGITAL 4-disk eSATA box) and have those drives be treated the same as internal storage - usable to expand an existing 4-disk RAID5 array made up of the internal drives, for example. I am assuming the answer is yes from what I am reading in other posts here, but haven't directly seen someone say they have done it.

Thanks for any info!
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orion
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Joined: Wed May 29, 2013 11:09 am

Re: eSATA Expansion

Post by orion »

You can plug eSATA expansion box, however the box should work as an external devices. You cannot expand the internal RAID-5 volume to the expansion box. It means you cannot expand to 5 disks RAID-5 volume by internal 4 disks + external 1 disk. As I know, you can only put those JBOD disks as single volumes (4 volumes in your case). If your expansion box can be configured as RAID device, you'd better do this way. NAS should treat this box as single disk.
MikeG.6.5
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Joined: Fri May 15, 2015 1:56 am

Re: eSATA Expansion

Post by MikeG.6.5 »

Orion has the right of it. Asustor's current products can't take control of a volume on an external USB or eSATA line to add to or create a Raid. You wouldn't want your internal Raid to include an external component, anyway. The external device goes down or is powered down and you lose all of the data on the internal array.

If Asustor ever makes either an eSATA or USB dedicated external expansion module, we can hope that controlling the module would be seamless in the ADM Storage Manager. EDIT: In theory this would be great if the power switch on the NAS also turned off the external enclosure, as well as turning it off if a UPS is attached. </edit> But I don't see extending an internal array across external connections as being viable. Too many potential problems to over come.

What I would love to see Asustor do is make an external enclosure so someone could set up something like this: Internal Raid 5 or 6, External Raid 5 or 6 and then mirror the internal to the external. Built in drive tolerances, built in data redundancy. Over-all greater stability, and it would just look neat if the cases were the same color, shape and size.
jturnley
Posts: 4
Joined: Fri Mar 11, 2016 2:14 am

Re: eSATA Expansion

Post by jturnley »

OK, thanks all. I'm not really worried about it -the 4x5TB drives I am getting will last me for at least a couple more years, and I can grow them to 6's or 8's later if needed. I appreciate the info.
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