What is Reddit's opinion of SABRENT 4-Bay USB 3.0 SATA 2.5"/3.5" SSD/HDD Docking Station (DS-U3B4)?

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If you go with one of these smaller machines you can just throw a bunch of SSDs in any sized JBOD enclosure or dock connected with USB 3 and have tons of storage in a nice compact form factor. Like this for example.

Check this out : Sabrent 4-Bay USB 3.0 SATA 2.5"/3.5" SSD/HDD Docking Station
https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Bay-Docking-Station-DS-U3B4/dp/B07H11KXCL/ref=sr\_1\_1?crid=RXQAJ4UL3FDI&keywords=Sabrent+4-Bay+USB+3.0+SATA+2.5%22%2F3.5%22+SSD%2FHDD+Docking+Station&qid=1640393377&sprefix=sabrent+4-bay+usb+3.0+sata+2...

Care to share your thoughts on vibration dampening?

I have a couple of these Sabrent 4-bay HDD docks sitting on top of a thin layer of spongy grippy mat, on top of a wooden board, sitting on a carpeted floor. A small fan blows over them and temps cap out at 45 degrees. Is this good for years of HDD life?

The cheapest solution is to leave it as is.

It may be neater to put the 4 14TB drives in one box but there's no real value in it.

You could use 4-bay hard drive docks. 2 would give room for all 6 drives and 2 empty bays for future expansion (backup).

https://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-4-Bay-Docking-Station-DS-U3B4/dp/B07H11KXCL/

You could probably just toss them in the bottom, but they won't be secure at all, so it wouldn't be the best idea.

What about some kind of docking station?

https://www.amazon.ca/Sabrent-4-Bay-Docking-Station-DS-U3B4/dp/B07H11KXCL/ref=sr\_1\_7?dchild=1&keywords=HDD+Docking+Station&qid=1629752718&sr=8-7

i already bought this for my raspi setup, but then i think, it's no different since it's still using USB. it just poorly planned.

this. I actually use this hub with four 1&2 TB drives and had an internal ssd of 128gb to run Windows. My own tiny server.

I've been using these:
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H11KXCL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o05_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

So far no issues with them, other than them raising the price.

Anymore than 4/5 disks and they are nas servers and really expensive.

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This one looks ok too:

https://www.amazon.com/Yottamaster-Aluminum-Enclosure-Support-Silver/dp/B06XK972L1/ref=sr_1_1_sspa?crid=2SU1E8MDJHG02&dchild=1&keywords=5%2Bbay%2Bdisk%2Benclosure&qid=1624435224&sprefix=5%2Bbay%2Bdisk%2B%2Caps%2C230&sr=8-1-spons&spLa=ZW5jcnlwdGVkUXVhbGlmaWVyPUEyRERSSVpENzlNTVBEJmVuY3J5cHRlZElkPUEwODcxOTk3RzhTUUpZWVBWT1FJJmVuY3J5cHRlZEFkSWQ9QTA1NjAwOTUxWVJVNVRXUTAzMTdNJndpZGdldE5hbWU9c3BfYXRmJmFjdGlvbj1jbGlja1JlZGlyZWN0JmRvTm90TG9nQ2xpY2s9dHJ1ZQ&th=1

It is a sabrent dock 4 bay. Mine works well but I do have a fan on it because the HDDs get toasty.

So I guess it's time for a bit of a reality check.

If you have an old car that needs $15,000 in repairs to get it running. And a new better car is $10,000. You might as well get the new car.

If you have 3x 1TB hard drives sitting around do not waste $75+ on them. For under $60 you can buy a 4TB hard drive:

https://pcpartpicker.com/products/internal-hard-drive/#A=3600000000000,20000000000000&sort=price&page=1

But otherwise to answer your post:

3 and 5 bays are nonstandard, 2 and 4 bays are standard.

If you don't care about enclosing them, a docking station like this works:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H11KXCL/

If you do care about enclosing them, you're now looking at something like this, and they are not cheap:
https://www.amazon.com/dp/B076ZH262B

You want a docking bay/docking station for that, usually. Something like this: https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H11KXCL

I have a M1 MacMini 16gb/512GB version. I use a Samsung T7 1TB SSD drive plugged into one of the thunderbolt ports as my everyday data drive for my docs and such. I use a generic USB 3.0 USB hub and plugged into that is a Sabrent 4 bay desktop drive dock loaded with (3) 1TB Spinner hard drives and 1 3TB spinner hard drive. I also have a Sabrent 2 bay desktop drive doc loaded with (2) 1 TB spinner drives. I use those drives in the Sabrent docs for working data storage. I do a lot of Genealogy and some photo editing. I have had any of them disconnect for no reason. They are rock steady. I have a generic Sentay model LS-6141 powered USB 3.0 hub (I purchased it from Amazon back in 2016, it's not even available anymore) that all my other USB stuff is plugged into. I use a hardwired Mac Keyboard with a Apple Trackpad II. I do have a Synology 4 bay NAS that houses all my entertainment vids and such. Here is the link to the 4 Bay Sabrent drive dock I use. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H11KXCL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s01?ie=UTF8&th=1

I can understand your frustration. I got lucky and all my stuff just worked when I set it up. I did do extensive research on the USB-C to HDMI dongle and got one from Anker model 310. I would love to add a dock to get more thunderbolt/USB-C ports but I keep reading about a lot of issues that some people are having and it makes me leery of trying them. I would scan YouTube and look at others that have videos that do what you do and maybe reach out to them for hardware recommendations. I would hate to see you go back to Windows.

 

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I too just upgraded from a MacPro 5,1 to a M1 MacMini. Here is what I got for my "external drives". https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H11KXCL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

This is the adapter I got for my second monitor. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07THJGZ9Z/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

I have a 7 port USB3 hub to connect everything to my Mini. I also purchased a Samsung T7 1TB external SSD, which is connected via Thunderbolt port. I got the 16GB/512GB model.

Hope this helps. You won't regret making the leap. My only problem is getting someone to buy my old MacPro.

Get one of these to get what you can off the drives. https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07H11KXCL/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_asin_title_o07_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Remember, this is for personal use. I'm spending my own money not my employer's, so price is more important than it would be at work, and performance is less important, so ... I use Whatever's Cheap On Amazon brand things like this, which present ordinary SATA devices as Just A Bunch Of Disks on USB, then I use the OS's built-in software RAID. Much cheaper than Synology/Qnap, and good enough IME for a small number of users.

Maybe if we get another Plague Year I'll use the time to build a proper ZFS appliance running IllumOS :-)

For backups I use rsnapshot.

Sabrent DS-U3B4

Amazon Link

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H11KXCL?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

or

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07QLMJ98T?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

I prefer the drive bay for drives, but the hub works well with pi's

In that case something simple like this should work for multi drives https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07H11KXCL/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_LeouFb6XCWB1Z

And for a cheaper option you can go with something like this for single drives https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MZC303G/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_i_YfouFbMWNPR8Z

Just make sure that it is the correct size for whatever drive you have. Standard desktop drives are 3.5"