Yeah, I don’t understand why JBOD with a decent chipset is so hard to find. I really don’t expect much from it, I just want to slide some drives in and have everything run consistently for a few months at a time. I’ll power cycle periodically to apply updates, so I’m not looking for 24/7/365 operation or anything.
FWIW, Level1Techs seems to recommend MediaSonic (timestamp is where he talks about reliability), but doesn’t give it a ringing endorsement. And that was one of the better ones he’s seen…
After a bunch of research, what I’ve found is:
- okay chipset, but garbage build quality (no dampening for drives, no hot-swap, etc)
- fancy controller that doesn’t support JBOD - non-starter for me, I don’t want anything to do with hw controllers
- expensive - at a certain point, I’ll just keep my oversized ATX case that does the job
Now I’m looking for compact cases that support 5 drives, like this one (a little too cheap perhaps?) or this one. It just seems reliable 4-5 bay USB-C enclosures just aren’t that popular.
Good point, I’ll consider MOCA. The main problem is that we have three sets (OTA antenna, satellite, and internet), and I’m not sure which are which, but figuring that out should be quite a bit easier than running cable. :)
I’m not planning on getting anything more than gigabit in the near future, though my city is rolling out fiber and claims to support up to 10gbit.