What is your use case? I ask because ESXi is free again, but it’s probably not a useful skill to learn these days. At least not as much as the competition.
Similarly, 2.5" mechanical drives only make sense for certain use cases. Otherwise I’d get SSDS or a 3.5" DAS.
If you skipped the area code, it probably failed the general validation check. To really test this, you would’ve needed to try a different (but completely valid) number
They all have to work (at least to an extent) using only x1. It’s part of the PCIe spec.
Missing pins are actually extremely common. If your board has a slot that’s x16 (electrically x8), which is very common for a second video card, take a closer look. Half the pins in the slot aren’t connected. It has the full slot to make you feel better about it, and it provides some mounting stability, but it’s electrically the same as an x8 that’s open.
USB the protocol, or just uses a USB cable? If it’s not using the protocol, the cables are a cheap way of getting cables of a certain spec.
Related, Pirate Bay used to (might still?) have a section where they mock all of the threatening letters that cite a different jurisdiction. Usually the US DMCA, but also similar laws from other countries.
They never posted any letters that cited Swedish (IIRC) law, because those were valid threats.
Also, be sure to run extensive burn in tests before deploying for production use. I had an entire batch from GoHardDrive fail on me during that testing, so my data was never in danger.
Thank you for the extra context. It’s relieving to know you don’t just have a bunch of USB “backup” drives connected.
To break this down to its simplest elements, you basically have a bunch of small DASes connected to a USB host controller. The rest could be achieved using another interface, such as SATA, SAS, or others. USB has certain compromises that you really don’t want happening to a member of a RAID, which is why you’re getting warnings from people about data loss. SATA/SAS don’t have this issue.
You should not have to replace the cable ever, especially if it does not move. Combined with the counterfeit card, it sounds like you had a bad parts supplier. But yes, parts can sometimes fail, and replacements on SAS are inconvenient. You also (probably) have to find a way to cool the card, which might be an ugly solution.
I eventually went with a proper server DAS (EMC ktn-stl3, IIRC), connected via external SAS cable. It works like a charm, although it is extremely loud and sucks down 250w @ idle. I don’t blame anyone for refusing this as a solution.
I wrote, rewrote, and eventually deleted large sections of this response as I thought through it. It really seems like your main reason for going USB is that specific enclosure. There should really be an equivalent with SAS/SATA connectors, but I can’t find one. DAS enclosures pretty much suck, and cooling is a big part of it.
So, when it all comes down to it, you would need a DAS with good, quiet airflow, and SATA connectors. Presumably this enclosure would also need to be self-powered. It would need either 4 bays to match what you have, or 16 to cover everything you would need. This is a simple idea, and all of the pieces already exist in other products.
But I’ve never seen it all combined. It seems the data hoarder community jumps from internal bays (I’ve seen up to 15 in a reasonable consumer config) straight to rackmount server gear.
Your setup isn’t terrible, but it isn’t what it could/should be. All things being equal, you really should switch the drives over to SATA/SAS. But that depends on finding a good DAS first. If you ever find one, I’d be thrilled to switch to it as well.
You currently have 16 disks connected via USB, in a ZFS array?
I highly recommend reimagining your path forward. Define your needs (sounds like a high-capacity storage server to me), define your constraints (e.g. cost), then develop a solution to best meet them.
Even if you are trying to build one on the cheap with a high Wife Acceptance Factor, there are better ways to do so than attaching 16+ USB disks to a thin client.
Not just VPN, but geolocation in general. I am in Ohio, but I am often geolocated as being in Chicago due to my ISP. Similar for mobile.
The comments are all assuming that it’s the same people that are viewing this content and promoting hatred. It may not be - even the reddest areas still have 30%+ blue voters (and vice-versa). Although the implications of that would be equally noteworthy and confusing.
Most people are on multiple platforms. Find them now, while you still can. Save whatever contact info you can for them. You don’t know when you’ll need it, nor why.
In the US, completely unpaid internships are rare. Most are paid, but fairly poorly. There are a few major reasons for this:
You have to meet a lot of requirements for unpaid to be legal, and it all has to be documented.
Internships are a “farm” program- many interns are offered and accept a full time position afterwards. If they were unpaid, they are unlikely to accept.
Minimum wage is an absolute joke everywhere in the country. Why bother fighting it when you can pay as little as $7.25/hour? Even doubling or tripling that makes it appealing to poor college students and the farm program, and won’t cost much.
(Your example would be illegal in the US, and possibly even enforced)
My point was, where do you draw the line? Any answer is equally arbitrary. MS drew it at 8th Gen Intel Core. Would 6th Gen have been the right answer? 3rd? Core 2 Duo? All of them can run Win 10 just fine, and can (at least technically, and for today) run Win11.
I’m only addressing that last line, but really think it through. Should you really expect, or even want, an OS that runs on a 386? It wasn’t that long ago that most Linux distros could. But they all moved away from it because that limited performance on anything more modern.
The newer instruction sets are created for a reason, and that reason is typically higher performance. If the OS (or any code, really) can use them, it will work better. But if you can’t or don’t, the code will be more compatible.
There also isn’t “any” computer; it’s simply not a thing. The question becomes how old (more technically, what minimum specs) do you want to support, and performance you want to be limited by?
While I agree that Microsoft has leaned too heavily into newer hardware as an expectation, there’s definitely a line to be drawn.
I think you mean LGA (Land Grid Array), meaning the pins are on the motherboard. Ball Grid Array (BGA) is used for embedded, non-removable CPUs.
The only thing I’ll add is that RAID is redundancy. Its purpose is to prevent downtime, not data loss.
If you aren’t concerned with downtime, RAID is the wrong solution.
The absolute easiest and simplest would be to modify your grub config to have a longer timer on the boot menu, effectively delaying them until the NAS is up.
That doesn’t necessarily mean it’s the best option- there are ways to make the actual boot process wait for mounts, or to stagger the WOL signals, or the solutions others have mentioned. But changing grub is quick and easy.
You’re overlooking a very common reason that people setup a homelab - practice for their careers. Many colleges offer a more legitimate setup for the same purpose, and a similar design. But if you’re choosing to learn AD from a free/cheap book instead of a multi-thousand dollar course, you still need a lab to absorb the information and really understand it.
Granted, AD is of limited value to learn these days, but it’s still a backbone for countless other tools that are highly relevant.
Careful with this- since MLC just means multi, I’ve seen drives marketed as “3-bit MLC”, i.e. TLC
The big caveat is that the BIOS must allow it, and most released versions do not.