Automated Storage Server Compatibility & Config Planner
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Instantly validate hardware compatibility and generate optimal RAID configurations for custom NAS and homelab builds.
Added Jan 28, 2026
6 signals
The Problem
Users building custom storage servers frequently face hardware compatibility issues, such as mismatched RAID controllers, power management quirks, and physical connectivity constraints. This leads to wasted money on incompatible parts and hours spent troubleshooting complex edge cases like SATA PWDIS or USB controller instability.
Potential Solution
Detailed solution approach available for premium members.
Why Now?
Market timing analysis available for premium members.
Best method for this raid setup?
Hello, I am trying to setup a raid using Hdds for redundancy and speed. I am trying to figure out what would be the best way to go with my setup? I can fit up to 10 HDDs and 7-8 SSDs into my case (G500A). I bought an LSI 9305-16i Card thinking it could run raid and finding out now that it can’t. Is there a raid controller that can hold up to 12-16 drives? What would work best? I know I will have to buy more hdds. Should I be using Windows disk, Storages Spaces, or a Raid controller? Here are my current drives. Seagate Enterprise SAS (6TB) - ST6000NM0024 Seagate Enterprise SAS (6TB) - ST6000NM0095 Seagate IronWolf Pro (6TB) - ST6000NE0021 Seagate Barracuda (SMR/4TB) ST4000DM004 WD Green (2TB)/WD Blue (1TB) for downloads
Turning Chromebox into NAS
Hi everyone, I'm looking to upgrade my current NAS, which is based on a regular old mid-tower PC with i5-2500 and 4x16 TB 3,5" HDDs to something more compact. I've found a great bargain for Asus Chromebox 5 mini-PC, which I snapped without really thinking through how to actually utilize it. I've already converted it to regular UEFI firmware and Linux install, but the question is how to connect drives to it - I'd really appreciate any advice. So far, I came up with the following options: 1. Buy HDD USB enclosure, cost around 100$ This is the simplest solution, but probably also the slowest and least reliable - I don't have hard data to back it up, but I don't think these cases are designed with longevity of the hard drives in mind. Also as I understand it, when used this way the enclosure internal electronics controls spinning up and down of HDDs, so it likely wouldn't be great in terms of power efficiency. 2) Buy HDD enclosure with an eSATA port + M.2 SATA controler, cost around 130$ Kind of similar to first variant, but to my understanding this way main OS would have more direct control of HDDs, so it would be likely a bit more reliable and power efficient. 3a) Buy a NAS PC case, M.2 SATA controller and put everything inside, with separate power supplies, cost around 150$ I feel it's the most robust solution as OS would have direct HDD access, but it comes with one issue - power. I can buy a small ATX power supply to power the HDDs, but Chromebox needs 20V, either via barrel plug or USB-C PD. If I let them be powered independently, in a situation when HDD PSU was left permanently on (by bridging the pins), but I shut down the PC controlling them, would HDDs turn off correctly? Would it have any negative consequences to their longevity? Would it drain much power? I've considered trying to connect Chromebox's power button to ATX PSU pins, but as it's tiny and closely surrounded with other component, it's far beyond my soldering skills. 3b) Buy a NAS PC case, M.2 SATA controller and put everything inside, with single power supply, cost unknown Similar to the previous version, but with a way to power Chromebox from the same ATX PSU as HDDs. Here I'm in a need of most help, is there a good way to do this? So far I've found this thing [https://www.coolgear.com/product/chargeit-100-watt-usb-type-c-charging-board](https://www.coolgear.com/product/chargeit-100-watt-usb-type-c-charging-board), which could supply power to the Chromebox, but main PSU still would have to be left turned on 24/7, so there's not much difference compared to previous version. I was hoping to find an ATX PSU with USB-C port built in natively, but it doesn't look like anyone came up with that idea just yet. 4) Buy an used off-the-shelf NAS from likes of Synology or QNAP, and use Chromebox for other services, cost around 300-400$ Simple solution, but not great in terms of either power efficiency or performance. Any suggestions or other ideas will be highly appreciated!
Laptop homelabbin - disk via USB or thunderbolt?
Hi all, I have a 2015 MacBook Pro 13" (A1502) with a busted keyboard. I was thinking about rehousing and repurposing it as small homeland setup. My only concern is connecting some storage. I'd like to connect at least 2 3.5" HDD for a raid setup. Looks like the only connectivity is 2x USB 3 (5gbps) and 2x thunderbolt 2 (20gbps). There is an apple SSD also, which I believe can be adapted into a M2 NVMe. I've read about the powered USB controllers for external drives and their instability. I was looking for a thunderbolt 2 options, but those came up dry. Maybe thunderbolt 3 to 2 is the way here? Anyone else have an idea to get this going? Thanks!
Lenovo TS140 + SATA SSDs invisible to BIOS after rebuild — SATA Power Disable (PWDIS) edge case?
I am trying to turn my old unraid server box into a pfsense router and I am running into a weird hardware issue. I just wanted to see if I am crazy, inept or if anyone in the group has seen anything like this…. Let me start with the hardware profile: • System: Lenovo ThinkServer TS140 • CPU: Xeon E3-1226 v3 • RAM: 16–24 GB DDR3 ECC • PSU: Lenovo OEM (SATA power only, no Molex) • SATA Mode: AHCI • Boot Mode: UEFI only • Drives tested: · 120 GB SATA SSD (former Unraid cache drive) · Second known-good SATA SSD (cross-test) Here are the symptoms I am encountering. SSD’s are completely cold after power-on (I realize they don’t get hot like an HDD but in my experience they don’t remain cold either). The BIOS does not detect and SATA drives and pfSense installer can only see the USB stick. SATA controller is enabled, and all ports are enabled. I have tried this on multiple SATA ports (all of which worked when this was my unraid server), multiple cables and 2 different SSD’s (both of which were unraid cache drives on this same hardware prior to me upgrading my server to a bigger box). I ran this problem through ChatGPT and this is the working theory it spit out: *This looks like a SATA Power Disable (PWDIS / pin 3) issue:* · *OEM PSU supplies 3.3 V on SATA power* · *SSDs appear to implement PWDIS* · *Result: SSDs never spin up → BIOS never sees them* *The usual Molex→SATA workaround isn’t possible since this PSU is SATA-only.* ChatGPT is also suggesting that I tape SATA power pin 3 on one of the drives and try it again, but this seems incredibly finnicky (though I am almost there as nothing else seems to work)… So.. all that for this question: Has anyone else run into Lenovo TS-series + modern SSD + PWDIS issues, especially where the drive *used to work in the same system*? I am really open to any and all useful suggestions, this just seems so weird to me!
Starwind VSAN performance help
We're deploying a new Proxmox based 2-node VM system to replace our vSphere deployment. We have two new Lenovo SR630v3 servers Each has: 1x Xeon Silver 4514Y 16 core cpu 64GB Ram ThinkSystem M.2 RAID B540i-2i SATA/NVMe \--Above controller has two 480Gb enterprise nvme SSD's in a RAID mirror, this is the OS drive for proxmox, and the starwind CVM appliances are installed on this drive on each host. ThinkSystem RAID 9350-8i 2GB Flash PCIe 12Gb Adapter \--Above controller has 4x 7.68TB SATA enterprise SSD's Broadcom NX-E PCIe 10Gb 2-Port Base-T Ethernet Adapter (direct linked each port to the other host, one is for the data/heartbeat network, one for replication) Broadcom 57416 10GBASE-T 2-port OCP Ethernet Adapter (using 1 of the 2 ports here for the VM/mgmt traffic). Everything is 10G. I've tried with everything using MTU 9000 and 1500, negligible difference. The issue we're having is very slow performance when we setup a LUN in starwind and connect to that from proxmox. If I don't enable writeback cache on the windows guest VM disks, we get like 2MB/s write. If I do enable writeback cache, it's over 100, but I think there is some fundamental issue here causing the slow non cacher performance. Currently I have created a raid 5 array on the 9350 in the host servers UEFI. I've passed that 9350 controller through to the starwind CVM linux appliance on each host. In the Starwind appliance, when I goto create a storage pool, it sees the big raid drive I had created. I've tried leaving it on the default option, or going to custom and making it zfs, but no real performance difference. One thing I don't see, is the "hardware raid" option I see in some screenshots from Starwind. Should this be an option when creating the pool? Even when I hadn't created the array in the host bios, and still passed through the card, it saw the individual sata SSD's but I didn't get a hardware raid option, just software (and performance was similarly very poor). Testing with iperf from the hosts to starwind on the data/heartbeat, and starwind to starwind both data-data and replication-replication, I get 9.8GB/s or so, so performance seems fine there. If I skip Starwind, and create an LVM on that hardware 5 raid drive, and add that to a VM, I get 200-300MB/s of write performance, so it does seem like it's just starwind slowing this down. Each starwind appliance currently has 16 cores and 16gb ram, but I saw similar performance even with 8core/8gb. Appliance is updated to the current version. Proxmox is 9.0. Any thoughts on what might be causing this? I see others posting way faster speeds so I think it's just a config issue on our side, but I can't find it.
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