For a project that's looking at checking the integrity of data on hard disks and getting a view on their longevity, error rates and so on, I was hoping to build a little Raspberry Pi 5 based device that would boot from an M.2 NVMe drive, and offer at least one SATA port to which a drive under test could be attached. There are other design considerations ...
1. The SATA drive (or maybe drives) would need to use the PCIe interface because seek times over USB3/SATA adapters is poor, and because getting SMART access via USB is unreliable.
2. I think here, there is less random access demand on the system drive, so that could be via USB 3. However, I would need more space, more reliability and if possible more speed than using an SD card for this. Also, I can use a hi-space RAM RPi 5 to benefit from additional caching.
3. As this is a tool, I would want to try and find an enclosure that would contain it.
So far, I can use a 16G Raspberry Pi 5 with the Suptronics 5-port SATA HAT, in a KKSB tall case and an external NVMe drive for the system - but surely there is a better option here such as a case like the Argon 1 with the NVMe drive built in. but with space for the SATA HAT, or maybe a HAT that supports NVMe boot with one SATA port - I just can't find it.
Any suggestions welcome!
1. The SATA drive (or maybe drives) would need to use the PCIe interface because seek times over USB3/SATA adapters is poor, and because getting SMART access via USB is unreliable.
2. I think here, there is less random access demand on the system drive, so that could be via USB 3. However, I would need more space, more reliability and if possible more speed than using an SD card for this. Also, I can use a hi-space RAM RPi 5 to benefit from additional caching.
3. As this is a tool, I would want to try and find an enclosure that would contain it.
So far, I can use a 16G Raspberry Pi 5 with the Suptronics 5-port SATA HAT, in a KKSB tall case and an external NVMe drive for the system - but surely there is a better option here such as a case like the Argon 1 with the NVMe drive built in. but with space for the SATA HAT, or maybe a HAT that supports NVMe boot with one SATA port - I just can't find it.
Any suggestions welcome!
Statistics: Posted by elsabiox — Fri Dec 05, 2025 7:43 pm — Replies 2 — Views 86