Tri-Bay NUC M.2 NAS

[BikingViking11]

The weather cleared up and after some wifely obligations I got some time with the NanoNAS (that name is growing on me)...and learned some things.

First off, it was the Add2PSU that was malfunctioning. No biggie, I'll just get another. I was tempted by this forum to upgrade to the KMPKT Dynamo Mini so I'll find another purpose for the PicoPSU someday. After busting out my Known Good Corsair TX850 PSU and shorting the pins for bench testing I was able to get everything else to work...sort of.

After sorting out the power I tested the M.2 drives and they wouldn't show in This PC or Disk Management. After finding and installing a driver for the M.2 to SATA adapter chipset I removed the port multiplier and plugged in two of the dual M.2 adapters directly to the M.2/SATA adapter, one fully encased, the other in the 8X SATA backplane...and again, nothing. I backed up, read the freakin' manual and set the RAID in the adapters to Span...and they appeared! (OK, the backplane drive was also plugged into the wrong port). Went back and added the port multiplier...nothing.

After some frustration I read through all the specs for the Addonics port multipliers and they state quite clearly that they are only compatible with "port multiplier AWARE" controllers. I had thought that meant just compatible, but nothing so far has made them work which leaves me to conclude that the M.2/SATA adapter just isn't going to work and I need a controller card.

Addonics has a few cards, even one that has ten ports, but I'm a bit hesitant now after realizing that I may have wasted the money on the previous port multipliers. No, I'm not crying about it, just saying that I've learned that I need to know more before pulling the trigger. I can always sell them off along with a bunch of other hardware laying around doing nothing.

FreeNAS recommends an HBA disk controller. One of the most affordable (and small) is the LSI Internal SATA/SAS 9211-8i 6Gb/s PCI-Express 2.0 RAID Controller Card. There's several reviews that state it's a great card for FreeNAS. It does have a limitation of eight drives attached, but if I scaled back a touch and got rid of the extra drives and just stuck with what the backplane provided...it may work. From a strictly modding perspective, getting rid of the extra drives frees up that space for the controller card. I can use the enclosed dual M.2 adapters in the backplane, no worries. Set to Span the dual M.2 adapters may read as a single drive, though I may be giving up some redundancy.

Going with either card will require an M.2 to PCI-E X4 adapter with a ribbon riser. Any suggestions on a good one?

EDIT: When will I ever learn?

Without any utter confirmation that it will work I ordered the LSI controller card. This also required ordering the pair of 4X SATA cables, a NGFF to X4 PCI-E riser and ribbon cable, an "upgraded version" (Hoping that Upgraded = Actually works) of the Add2PSU and the KMPKT Dynamo Mini are all on order. Sadly much of it will take some time to arrive, so I'll clean up the studio and work on other things...like my bicycle rotor tools.

 

[BikingViking11]

Well, lots of good stuff came my way...just not all of it.

The SATA power cable supplies and crimper will allow me to make that custom loom. The Dynamo Mini looks sweet and not much larger than the PicoPSU. It may even be narrower. The O-ring kit is partially for experimenting with for cable management, partially just for stocking my bicycle repair supplies and other general purposes. The dual M.2 adapter was picked up to host a couple more drives. I'll be getting more after some testing, but other projects also loom.

The LSI SATA controller card is a bit useless until the cables arrive (Due in today), but even when they do the work just begins. The card needs to be flashed to IT mode (Initiator Target mode) which will make it act as a Host Bus Adapter with no RAID features. This allows FreeNAS to have direct access to all eight connected drives (and with an SAS expander, a crazy number of drives could be added). This may have to be done with DOS on a host machine first. I'll have to read into it more as I don't want to brick my new baby.

I may or may not get into this over the weekend. The snow this week is melting and turning my studio into an indoor rainforest. If I can't get indoor work done I may start hauling stuff to the landfill instead. Last weekend I pulled a bunch of stuff out of storage to play with including watercooling gear, an SNES, a GameCube and an original Xbox, loads of PC parts, games, books and so on. I also binned a lot of stuff so it's past time to make more room. If I'm to get that roof project done I'll need the storage space for materials.

Oh, just to sidetrack myself even further I ordered a bunch of FastPipe and fittings for making swiveling articulated booms for cameras throughout the studio. It's part of a plan to have about twelve fixed camera points for cable management purposes, yet each point will be very adjustable to get just about any angle I'll need and be able to switch between them as each project dictates. FastPipe is a cool Lean Manufacturing system for making fixtures and furniture with a bunch of different fittings available, and all reusable as demands change. It's sort of like Tinkertoys for adults.

If I get anything done on the project I'll be sure to let you all know. Thanks.

 

[LukeD]

I'm following your build, as I also want to build a small portable but redundant nas as im mobile at the moment.
I have a slightly different idea, but I'm trying to use a lot of the same components you are.

I'm going to try and build mine around a Gigabyte Brix as I understand the onboard SATA controller in your NUC doesn't support SATA Multiplier to work with the Startech RAID M.2 SATA -> SATA adapter, is that right ?

 

[BikingViking11]

I'm following your build, as I also want to build a small portable but redundant nas as im mobile at the moment.
I have a slightly different idea, but I'm trying to use a lot of the same components you are.

I'm going to try and build mine around a Gigabyte Brix as I understand the onboard SATA controller in your NUC doesn't support SATA Multiplier to work with the Startech RAID M.2 SATA -> SATA adapter, is that right ?

Yes, that's my understanding, but what I've read is it's also true for any Intel SATA controller. The exception would be if you run the Startech dual M.2 adapter in RAID0 or SPAN modes. Mirror or JBOD will not recognize the second drive. Soon I'll have all the components for the LSI SATA controller card. Allegedly that will allow all the drives to be recognized, though I don't know about the dual M.2 adapters until I try them in all modes. I'm glad my experience is proving helpful.

 

[LukeD]

So I've tried the Startech dual M.2 data adapter (25S22M2NGFFR) and RAID 1 (mirror) works well. You will only see 1 drive in the OS because the adapter handles the mirroring and it hides the second drive from the OS.

I'm using an i7 8th gen Gigabyte Brix GB-BRi7H-8550. This system has 1 x SATA connection and 1 x NVME M.2
Unfortunately I can confirm that the system DOES NOT have the Port Multiplier function which is required to work with the Startech
25S22M2NGFFR adapter in JBOD mode. Once connected in JBOD mode I only see 1 drive instead of two.

There is one mysterious setting on the adapter and its called "GUI" and there's nothing in the manual about it ..... so there's the following modes:
RAID0 - Presents one drive to the OS, Capacity = sum of both m.2 disks, splits each file to be written half to each drive, if one m.2 drive fails you loose all your data
RAID1 - Presents one drive to the OS, Capacity = capacity of 1 m.2 disk, writes the same file to both m.2 disks, if one m.2 drive fails you still retain all your data
SPAN - Presents one drive to the OS, Capacity = sum of both m.2 disks, unlike RAID0 it writes a complete file to 1 drive and once one drive is full it starts writing to the next. If you lose one m.2 drive you loose all the files on just that disk.
JBOD - Presents both drives to the OS, Capacity = capacity of both m.2 disks, writes to each disk independently, requires Port Multiplier functionality which is not present on Intel chipsets (present on some Asmedia / Marvell chipsets)
GUI - ???? - it just presented 100MB to the OS from a 2TB disk ? no idea.

What I've done in my setup and how I'll go forward considering this information is:

Gigabyte Brix GB-BRi7H-8550 (4core/8thread)
32GB RAM
1 x 1TB Intel NVME
25S22M2NGFFR Adapter in RAID1 hosts 2 samsung disks
2 x 2TB Samsung EVO860

The aim of this setup is to be as portable as possible and to work as a portable router + nas + vm hosting machine. I'll write the build up soon as I think its a very convenient setup and its super quick. Has some fast disk and some redundant disks so I can store mission critical documents and data on it.

 

[BaK]

GUI - ???? - it just presented 100MB to the OS from a 2TB disk ? no idea.

https://www.startech.com/HDD/Adapters/dual-m2-ssd-sata-adapter~25S22M2NGFFR#tech-specs
No GUI from the specs list, but a BIG mode (Spanning or Concatenation). Could that be it?

25S22M2NGFFR Adapter in RAID1 hosts 2 samsung disks

Question for you guys, will your RAID1 M.2 drives still be readable without being into the Startech adapter, in case the latter fails on you?

From my readings, this is a drawback when using an hardware RAID solution. If the card fails, you better have a replacement one or you will not be able to read the content of the RAID any more.
That is why I opted for simple software RAID1 on my small NAS. If anything goes bad I could always plug the drives in another computer and get my data back.

 

[LukeD]

Turns out GUI mode, after a bit more investigation, is a mode where you control the RAID adapter's functionality through a piece of software. Not all adapters support this however. I tried installing the Raid Configuration Utility that some other companies with this particular board use and it did not detect it via USB.

Question for you guys, will your RAID1 M.2 drives still be readable without being into the Startech adapter, in case the latter fails on you?

From my readings, this is a drawback when using an hardware RAID solution. If the card fails, you better have a replacement one or you will not be able to read the content of the RAID any more.
That is why I opted for simple software RAID1 on my small NAS. If anything goes bad I could always plug the drives in another computer and get my data back.

Yes, the M.2 drives do work if you plug them directly into a PC or a M.2 SATA -> USB adapter. No problem there. This was actually the very first test I did to make sure the data I put on it can be retrieved.
The adapter will also automatically rebuild your RAID1 should you replace one of the failed drives with a new one. Pretty neat to be honest.

 

[BikingViking11]

Question for you guys, will your RAID1 M.2 drives still be readable without being into the Startech adapter, in case the latter fails on you?

From my readings, this is a drawback when using an hardware RAID solution. If the card fails, you better have a replacement one or you will not be able to read the content of the RAID any more.

In my case I'll have eight adapters, though all of them will have to work for ZFS to be redundant. If the LSI SATA controller card were to fail, yeah, I'd have to buy another one. I've read of folks buying a backup card in case it's years down the road when the controller card fails and they're unavailable. Mine seems pretty common and cheap, so I won't worry about it now.

If my RAIDZ fails I'll have to replace the failed drive and then rebuild the array. Pretty sure I couldn't read the data off a single drive.

Turns out GUI mode, after a bit more investigation, is a mode where you control the RAID adapter's functionality through a piece of software. Not all adapters support this however. I tried installing the Raid Configuration Utility that some other companies with this particular board use and it did not detect it via USB.

That seems like a cool feature. Strange that Startech doesn't give more info about it.

Yes, the M.2 drives do work if you plug them directly into a PC or a M.2 SATA -> USB adapter. No problem there. This was actually the very first test I did to make sure the data I put on it can be retrieved.
The adapter will also automatically rebuild your RAID1 should you replace one of the failed drives with a new one. Pretty neat to be honest.

That is pretty neat. I'm mainly interested in running the adapters in JBOD then gaining the redundancy from a RAIDZ2 or 3. I don't have any "mission critical" data to store so I'd prefer to have more capacity than mirroring allows. I'm also planning a more conventional mechanical drive NAS for occasional backups, so it's very unlikely I'd lose everything.

My main goal for the project was to learn more. I thank you for your input as I'm learning indeed.

 

[BikingViking11]

Sorry for the double post.

All I have to add is that my SAS-SATA cables came in. I still won't be able to test the controller card until I have a ribbon riser cable...and it's coming from China.

 

[BaK]

Turns out GUI mode, after a bit more investigation, is a mode where you control the RAID adapter's functionality through a piece of software. Not all adapters support this however. I tried installing the Raid Configuration Utility that some other companies with this particular board use and it did not detect it via USB.

Yes, the M.2 drives do work if you plug them directly into a PC or a M.2 SATA -> USB adapter. No problem there. This was actually the very first test I did to make sure the data I put on it can be retrieved.
The adapter will also automatically rebuild your RAID1 should you replace one of the failed drives with a new one. Pretty neat to be honest.

Neat indeed!
Thanx for the feedback and infos!

 

[LukeD]

I didn't want to hijack your thread any further BikingViking11, so I created my own thread for my build: LINK

 

[BikingViking11]

We finally got some good weather this past week so I was able to do a few projects in the studio. Since I'm still waiting on hardware for testing function I focused on the physical aspects of the mod...especially after making the hardware changes.

The plastic portion of the case was cut away roughly, then sized down carefully to fit within the 3.5" HDD cage. This retained my ability to use all the stock mounting screw locations from underneath as well as the mobo mounting screws on top. It took some very careful shaving with a handheld 1-3/8" belt sander as the plastic got as thin as 0.5mm...and didn't break. Once it all fit between the cage rails additional porting was done to allow it to slide back and forth. Eventually I got it to where the bezel was right up against the faceplate of the enclosure.

I'm still trying to work out how it will all fit before committing to screwing it in from underneath. The drive cage is mounted on rubber grommets to isolate it from the case for vibration. Think I need to run a ground wire?

The SATA controller card looks really out of place, but it should fit. I'll be looping the SAS-4xSATA cables to make them more compact.

It's fitting everything else I'm concerned about. Still playing around with configurations for the HDPlex PSU and Add2PSU combo that allows it to be removed easily and cables to route neatly.

I also still need to fit in the Startech 2.5" M.2 adapter for the OS drive. Once what works presents itself I'll build the brackets to mount the controller, 2.5" drive and PSU and mount the 40mm fans in front. The bezel will be getting a custom cover, still haven't decided what material. Aluminum might be nice. If I decide to run the RGB strip (and can find one that fits) shiny aluminum might make for a nice lightshow.

 

[LukeD]

Hey mate here's something that might be a little easier to contain in the small footprint you're working with:
http://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=930

This 4 port M.2 raid adapter has Port Multiplier abilities. So you could theoretically hang up to 8 SATA drives off it.

 

[BikingViking11]

Hey mate here's something that might be a little easier to contain in the small footprint you're working with:
http://www.sybausa.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=930

This 4 port M.2 raid adapter has Port Multiplier abilities. So you could theoretically hang up to 8 SATA drives off it.

I appreciate that @LukeD , but the other adapter I used was I think an Iocrest that was listed as port multiplier compatible and didn't work. As soon as I get the right cable I'll test the LSI controller card. If it works I'll probably stick with it. If not I may look into other options, so I will keep this in mind. Thanks.

 

[LukeD]

This one is a different chipset

 

[zol]

Hi there!

When you took the mainboard out of the NUC case, did you have to peel off the conductive foam pads?

I have the same NUC8i5BEH, destined for a less compact case, and I'm wondering if I can get away with not removing the pads to keep it as resellable as possible..

 

[BikingViking11]

Hi there!

When you took the mainboard out of the NUC case, did you have to peel off the conductive foam pads?

I have the same NUC8i5BEH, destined for a less compact case, and I'm wondering if I can get away with not removing the pads to keep it as resellable as possible..

Hello Zol!

I did have to remove those pads, though I did retain them. Of course in my case there's no way I'm reselling the case as it's cut to pieces. I have a tendency of retaining things of dubious value for way too long which is why my morning was taken up with several trips to the landfill and recycling instead of working on this project.

With the chores mostly done I'm hoping to get back to the project tomorrow. In other news my camera mounts are coming out pretty sweet. I'll share more about those later.

 

[zol]

Hello Zol!

I did have to remove those pads, though I did retain them. Of course in my case there's no way I'm reselling the case as it's cut to pieces.

Ah okay, thanks for the info!

It's a shame they don't offer the board without the case like they've done for previous generations..

 

[BikingViking11]

Ah okay, thanks for the info!

It's a shame they don't offer the board without the case like they've done for previous generations..

Agreed! I am one person that was certainly in the market for just a bare motherboard. They have retained features for that purpose such as a front panel header, though I do think that modifications would have to be made to put it in certain other cases due to the portions that bump out past the 100mmX100mm form factor "standard".

 

[BikingViking11]

My apologies for not updating in a while. I haven't given up on the project, just been distracted with a lot of others.

The few small parts I was waiting for came in, namely the X4 riser ribbon and even some fan adapters that I waited a month for. The sad news is I'll likely be distracted even more as I prepare to take on the roof repair project. It will be so worth it to get past it and have a dry and secure workspace. I've also been doing a lot of work on camera infrastructure and have run into snags and may need to take another approach entirely. Oh well, it's all part of the learning experience, right?