Question Possibly adding external HDD-enclosure to an UnRaid NAS?

[rasdane]

Hi,

Seeking advice please.

I'm running an UnRaid NAS server in a Jonsbo N1 case -- essentially a version of LTT's build from YouTube, with slightly different parts. (

View: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=boKmZKTKXHc&t=68s
)
Everything is working great.

But.

While I'm fine for now, eventually I'm going to run low on storge.
Now I could of course upgrade to larger HDDs in the enclosure... which would be fine.

But I happen to have an unused Mediasonic PROBOX 4 Bay 3.5” SATA Hard Drive Enclosure lying around. This one: https://www.newegg.com/mediasonic-hf2-su3s2-office-products/p/N82E16817576009

I also already have several unused HDDs that are perhaps on the smaller side, but work fine, and that I would like to re-purpose if possible.

So my question is:
If I throw the HDDs in the Mediasonic enclosure, and then connect it to my Unraid server (using USB 3.0), then I should be able to add those HDDs to my UnRaid array, correct?
Would there be an issue with transfer speeds between the two enclosures that would affect the speed/stability of the existing UnRaid?

My top priority is to not break anything that's working now -- and lose my data! But this would be a cheaper way for me to add more storage to the array, as I already have everything.

... Or am I being stupid for even considering this?


I've always had great advice here before, so I appreciate any opinion.

 

[evermorex76]

Never touched Unraid but I can say with some certainty that drives in the enclosure will be ridiculously slower to access than the ones in the PC. USB3 might be fine for sequential throughput once it starts flowing (though still not as fast as direct SATA), but random access will suck, and you're going to have multiple drives sharing that one connection, which aren't even going to match the performance characteristics of what you have in the main system to start with. Yeah, it'll work I'm sure, but you're going to lose performance AND you're going to have some of your data on drives that could suddenly get disconnected from the system, possibly completely losing it depending on the arrangement of the arrays.

 

[rasdane]

Thank you, evermorex76!
What you're describing is what I was thinking might be the case... but I wanted to make sure!

... If I need more space, I will increase the size of my HDDs in the existing array.
Tx again.