SOLVED Can I use External HDDs for extra Storage in TrueNAS Scale?

[Ashvath Sridharan]

Hello TrueNAS community!

I recently just ran out of storage and am planning to increase it by adding more hard drives but sadly I am unable to due to the lack of SATA Data ports on my motherboard so I have a few hard drive enclosures and I was hoping if I could add more hard drives that way. My enclosures run in USB 2.0 so I'm guessing it will be really slow but either way I just want to add more storage. I am in a bit of a hurry so please reply as soon as possible.

Thank You!
Ashvath Sridharan

 

[chuck32]

I am in a bit of a hurry so please reply as soon as possible.

You should not rush things like this.

I don't think truenas and external HDDs play nice - search the forums for that, I'm sure the information is there.

You can get a HBA card if you have a free PCI slot, if the number of SATA ports is the problem.

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

You should not rush things like this.

I don't think truenas and external HDDs play nice - search the forums for that, I'm sure the information is there.

You can get a HBA card if you have a free PCI slot, if the number of SATA ports is the problem.

No I don't have an extra PCI-E slot, I'm using that for my GPU for Plex Transcoding. My only option is to use External HDDs

 

[chuck32]

No I don't have an extra PCI-E slot, I'm using that for my GPU for Plex Transcoding. My only option is to use External HDDs

Take a look here, I didn't find the post I had in mind immediately.

We don't anything about your hardware, so it's hard to make recommendations. Maybe you want to add a complete list of your hardware as per forum rules.

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

My specs:
CPU: Intel Core i5-10400 @ 2.90GHz
GPU: NVIDIA GeForce GT710 2GB VRAM
RAM: 8GB DDR4 2666MHz
Storage: 1TB HDD 500 GB HDD 2TB HDD (Existing Internally) 512GB SSD 500GB HDD (Want to add by HDD enclosure)
OS: TrueNAS Scale running on a 32GB 3.0 USB Drive
Networking: Inbuilt 1GBps LAN Adapter Realtek

 

[ChrisRJ]

[..] I have a few hard drive enclosures and I was hoping if I could add more hard drives that way. My enclosures run in USB 2.0 so I'm guessing it will be really slow but either way I just want to add more storage.

You are asking for serious trouble incl. data loss with that approach. I would strongly discourage it.

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

You are asking for serious trouble incl. data loss with that approach. I would strongly discourage it.

Can you elaborate on the other serious troubles and how? Because I am not going to be moving the hard drive, it will always be connected to the NAS.

 

[ChrisRJ]

This question comes up like every 4 weeks. Please have a look at what the forum search provides. In a nutshell ZFS was developed in the early 2000s for enterprise hardware (6-7 digit amounts of money) and therefore makes assumptions about your environment. If those are not met, while everything looks fine most of the time, there will be trouble sooner or later.

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

Can you elaborate on the other serious troubles and how? Because I am not going to be moving the hard drive, it will always be connected to the NAS.

There are several threads on why USB is not reliable--from a consumer standpoint it is relatively reliable, but from a "ZFS is going to spank your hardware" standpoint you're just putting the USB drives right in the crosshairs of a trained sniper. Remember ZFS is Copy-On-Write, and while that makes ZFS and TrueNAS very reliable it does use more hardware resources than say ext3, NTFS, FAT32, or exFAT. From an industrial-grade hardware standpoint that's what the hardware is designed for, from a consumer grade standpoint you're looking to overheat it, bottleneck it, swamp it with a lot of RF which makes the error-detection/correction routines work that much harder, etc.

Something not yet addressed: are you running on a gaming mainboard? Regarding your hardware, RealTek drivers in general are known to be sketchy, so the LAN adapter might negatively impact things down the road (or perhaps has, sometimes logs show that), ... and what level of redundancy are your existing drives configured for? Mind you we're not being snobby, we are very interested in helping you protect your data long-term and as inexpensively as practical.

 

[chuck32]

Can you elaborate on the other serious troubles and how? Because I am not going to be moving the hard drive, it will always be connected to the NAS.

Take a look here, I didn't find the post I had in mind immediately.

This should have given you some insight.

You shouldn't blindly trust us, but when three people here tell you that it's a bad idea it probably is.

What HDDs are you planning on using? CMR drives?

Personally, if you don't want to spend a lot of extra cash, look for a mainboard with 1 extra slot and get a used LSI HBA. That should be the cheapest option you have.
You could even see if you can get a used super micro board. I'd recommend something like X10SLL-F (mainly because it is available under 50 Eurs), should be compatible with your CPU. Only caveat was for me: I didn't have a compatible CPU cooler and finding a compatible one was a rather expensive task (ended up paying 50 Eur, could have saved if I went down the used route there as well probably).

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

This should have given you some insight.

You shouldn't blindly trust us, but when three people here tell you that it's a bad idea it probably is.

What HDDs are you planning on using? CMR drives?

Personally, if you don't want to spend a lot of extra cash, look for a mainboard with 1 extra slot and get a used LSI HBA. That should be the cheapest option you have.
You could even see if you can get a used super micro board. I'd recommend something like X10SLL-F (mainly because it is available under 50 Eurs), should be compatible with your CPU. Only caveat was for me: I didn't have a compatible CPU cooler and finding a compatible one was a rather expensive task (ended up paying 50 Eur, could have saved if I went down the used route there as well probably).

I can't change my motherboard because it is proprietary. It a Dell Vostro 3888 Mini Tower. I am using normal hardware what would be found in normal PCs none of them are NAS drives although one of them is a CCTV Footage HDD

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

There are several threads on why USB is not reliable--from a consumer standpoint it is relatively reliable, but from a "ZFS is going to spank you" standpoint you're just putting the USB drives right in the crosshairs of a trained sniper. Remember ZFS is Copy-On-Write, and while that makes ZFS and TrueNAS very reliable it does use more hardware resources than say ext3. From an industrial-grade hardware standpoint that's what the hardware is designed for, from a consumer grade standpoint you're looking to overheat it, bottleneck it, swamp it with a lot of RF which makes the error-detection/correction routines work that much harder, etc.

Something not yet addressed: are you running on a gaming mainboard? Regarding your hardware, RealTek drivers in general are known to be sketchy, so the LAN adapter might negatively impact things down the road (or perhaps has, sometimes logs show that), ... and what level of redundancy are your existing drives configured for? Mind you we're not being snobby, we are very interested in helping you protect your data long-term and as inexpensively as practical.

Thanks all of you for keeping cool, I know what I'm asking for is very straightforward with a straightforward answer but I'm on a really tight budget, trying to use what I have, I am quite new to Linux based stuff. My motherboard is some Dell motherboard and I haven't gone through any issues of using the RealTek LAN, I forgot what type of RAID I'm using but there is no redundancy and I have 2 pools.

 

[chuck32]

forgot what type of RAID I'm using but there is no redundancy and I have 2 pools.

You could check though..

Hopefully you already know this: RAID is not a backup. So even if you used redundancy you should have separate backup copies. Especially if you have no redundancy in your pools.

It a Dell Vostro 3888 Mini Tower.

That is a key information!

Under these circumstances I'm afraid you should go for bigger hard drives. Yes they are not cheap either but if you're storage need is around 3-4 TB, id advise you to get 2x 6-8 TB CMR drives and run them as a mirror. I know this will be around 3-400 Eurs but thats the only thing I'd recommend you if you care about the data at all.

Slapping unsuitable hardware together with unsuitable connections will lead to tears eventually.

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

You could check though..

Hopefully you already know this: RAID is not a backup. So even if you used redundancy you should have separate backup copies. Especially if you have no redundancy in your pools.


That is a key information!

Under these circumstances I'm afraid you should go for bigger hard drives. Yes they are not cheap either but if you're storage need is around 3-4 TB, id advise you to get 2x 6-8 TB CMR drives and run them as a mirror. I know this will be around 3-400 Eurs but thats the only thing I'd recommend you if you care about the data at all.

Slapping unsuitable hardware together with unsuitable connections will lead to tears eventually.

How do I check what RAID am I using? And also it isn't mission critical data, it's all just backups of computers at home and DVDRipping for Plex

 

[MrGuvernment]

It is simply not reliable.

That external USB drive decides it is going to go into powersaving mode all on its own...now your TrueNAS is reporting a dropped drive and a compromised array.....

Can you not delete data that is not critical, or just connect the USB drive to a computer and move files off you do not need to have on it? If you are using it for plex, the gpu, i presume you have a bunch of media content, which you can either rip again, or "obtain" however you did....

Your system does have 2x PCIe 3 x1 slots, you could get a PCIe 1x SATA card, but now you need a place to mount them in your case, which there is no where to mount them, and now you also have to split the SATA power cables, and most of these OEM systems will be using a single rail from the PSU...and are not meant to go above what they shipped with.

This system is not meant for expansion at all.

When you installed TrueNAS, how did you configure the drives and your pools? How big are your drives, and how much usable space do you have?

 

[Arwen]

TrueNAS and ZFS are simply not suitable for all hardware. (TrueNAS won't run on x86_32 or any ARM computers...) Yes, you can run ZFS on miniature desktops and use it for things like a Media server, (I do). But, TrueNAS has more requirements for reliability.

In essence, their is no perfect open source NAS software for all uses.

As for USB attached data drives, I wrote this Resource on the subject. Note that not all the items may impact you, BUT, some can and if they do, their is potential data loss.

Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks

This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...

www.truenas.com

Long time TrueNAS users tend to be conservative in our NAS computer builds. And we don't want others to experience data loss, or long outages. So we suggest and show examples of known working configurations, (like Intel network chips / cards).

 

[WI_Hedgehog]

@Arwen is right, TrueNAS is probably not a good fit for your needs. You might have much better luck and more reliability with Ubuntu Server if it's configured reasonably, which should be fairly straightforward. This is not meant to discourage you in any way, rather to help you find a solution for your current situation.

 

[ChrisRJ]

And also it isn't mission critical data, it's all just backups of computers at home and DVDRipping for Plex

While I agree with you on the DVD part, I have a different view on the backup side.

In my view backups (apart from 10+ years of private pictures) are the very definition of mission-critical data in a personal environment.

When you need a backup, there has usually been a serious incident. In that case I want my backup to be there and I also want to certain that the data have not been compromised, corrupted, etc.

If you disagree and /or have additional measures in place that we don't know about, that is of course fine. As someone said, we just don't want you to loose data.

One last thing: From your setup as well as the requirements I am really not sure that TrueNAS is the best possible solution for you. May I ask why you chose it in the first place?

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

While I agree with you on the DVD part, I have a different view on the backup side.

In my view backups (apart from 10+ years of private pictures) are the very definition of mission-critical data in a personal environment.

When you need a backup, there has usually been a serious incident. In that case I want my backup to be there and I also want to certain that the data have not been compromised, corrupted, etc.

If you disagree and /or have additional measures in place that we don't know about, that is of course fine. As someone said, we just don't want you to loose data.

One last thing: From your setup as well as the requirements I am really not sure that TrueNAS is the best possible solution for you. May I ask why you chose it in the first place?

I chose TrueNAS because I had a computer lying around and I was sick and tired of ripping DVDs and storing them on a USB drive and connecting them to a TV and also I have a large friend group and thought I could make my movies accessible to everyone. I did have problems with TrueNAS Core and once I found out about TrueNAS Scale I immediately switched to that and it's running without any issues. I like TrueNAS Scale because of the kind of user friendly interface and the fact that it's free of charge, it's also a great place to start for people who don't know any Unix coding etc.

 

[Ashvath Sridharan]

It is simply not reliable.

That external USB drive decides it is going to go into powersaving mode all on its own...now your TrueNAS is reporting a dropped drive and a compromised array.....

Can you not delete data that is not critical, or just connect the USB drive to a computer and move files off you do not need to have on it? If you are using it for plex, the gpu, i presume you have a bunch of media content, which you can either rip again, or "obtain" however you did....

Your system does have 2x PCIe 3 x1 slots, you could get a PCIe 1x SATA card, but now you need a place to mount them in your case, which there is no where to mount them, and now you also have to split the SATA power cables, and most of these OEM systems will be using a single rail from the PSU...and are not meant to go above what they shipped with.

This system is not meant for expansion at all.

When you installed TrueNAS, how did you configure the drives and your pools? How big are your drives, and how much usable space do you have?

I configured my drives in RAID (Not sure which type but there is no redundancy, just the drives together as one storage space) the total capacity is 3.5TB and I have around 100GB left.