ROCKPro64 with 16 ports SATA controller

[stuartiannaylor]

@stuartiannaylor: Just to answer a few of your talking points.

I was thinking of using a regular ATX power supply for several reasons, the main one is that it's cheaper to get 12V and 5V at pretty high amperage.
For instance I can find an brand new  EVGA 600W with a single 12V49A rail and a 5V20A rail for less than 50€. More than enough to power safely the ROCKPro64 and 10 to 12 hard-drives.
Plus it's rated 80+, meaning less electricity wasted. And usually brand names power supply don't destroy all your hardware when they fail (which all power supply end up doing eventually, even brand names one as I have already experienced it after 7 years 24/7 powered on).
It has 6 SATA power connector, that can be doubled using adapters like these.
Power supply, for machines running 24/7, is really not something you can really spare expenses on.

I looked over for a USB3.0 solution, using a PCI-E like the one you linked. UASP adapter with 12V input for 3.5" harddrives are not that cheap either, I have found models like this one for instance. Plus I'd need a few USB3.0 hub to connect 2 to 3 UASP adapters per USB ports on the controller, with maybe 5V external connection to not overpower the PCI-E controller with that much disks.
In the end it won't be cheaper than the IOCrest SI-PEX40097 SATA controller, and it's a less clean solution, but it's a fallback solution for sure.

For the casing, I'd still go the individual hot-swap from the front route as it's way more practical IRL, even if it cost more. The Orico one can be found for 8.75€ a pop when bought by 10 or more.

Software wise, I'd need to do some more research into it, and some testing before going toward a different solution than what I already use. But on first glance Snapraid seem to have many advantages indeed.


EDIT: the USB solution could be cheaper using something like these:
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32897789991.html
https://m.fr.aliexpress.com/item/32829472708.html

If you do decide to go for https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32546377052.html it will be interesting what benchmarks you get.
Highest I have seen have been a single Samsung NVME 970 SSD

Code:

Command line used: iozone -e -I -a -s 100M -r 4k -r 16k -r 512k -r 1024k -r 16384k -i 0 -i 1 -i 2
Output is in kBytes/sec
Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
Processor cache size set to 1024 kBytes.
Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
File stride size set to 17 * record size.
                                                             random    random     bkwd    record    stride                                    
             kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
         102400       4    52099    77524   104207   105324    48114    78504                                                          
         102400      16   160544   231475   276300   278531   160180   233806                                                          
         102400     512   738881   809485   685261   707192   676594   811610                                                          
         102400    1024   795915   841642   708547   730494   693498   851120                                                          
         102400   16384  1111519  1167200  1098700  1139913  1110364  1193693                                                          

iozone test complete.

From a while back when I tested my Marvell 88SE9235 4 port with just a RAID0 test I got with a test of 4x budget Integral P5 120gb sata SSD

Code:

Command line used: iozone -e -I -a -s 100M -r 4k -r 16k -r 512k -r 1024k -r 16384k -i 0 -i 1 -i 2
       Output is in kBytes/sec
       Time Resolution = 0.000001 seconds.
       Processor cache size set to 1024 kBytes.
       Processor cache line size set to 32 bytes.
       File stride size set to 17 * record size.
                                                             random    random     bkwd    record    stride
             kB  reclen    write  rewrite    read    reread    read     write     read   rewrite      read   fwrite frewrite    fread  freread
         102400       4    33519    47927    52701    51023    26700    46382
         102400      16   105763   132604   138080   155514    87026   135111
         102400     512   276220   320320   311343   294629   267624   335363
         102400    1024   493565   522038   463105   470833   398584   522560
         102400   16384   687516   701200   625733   623531   555318   681535