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I recently obtained a surplus rackmount server, but it is BIG and HEAVY and LOUD. 6 fans in parallel, its nuts. It also has a bunch of really good hard drives (8 x 500gb) and I'm all like... dang... that would make one heck of a plex media server if I could plug those drives into a raspberry pi.

But I don't know if it all works that way, if a RAID controller yoinked from the server really mushes 8 HDs down to 1 virtual HD that can just plug into a USB port. I'm guessing not, because similar things on Amazon go for about $200.

6 fans in parallel backed by dual power supplies are... quite a lot.

Benjamin H
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1 Answers1

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To answer the question in the title of your post, you can remove a RAID controller from a server. That is assuming it a removable expansion card. Some servers might be using an on-board RAID controller built in to the motherboard, which would not be removable.

Obviously, you cannot plug an expansion card into a Raspberry Pi, as they dont have an expansion bus, or the power to run an expansion card.

However, you do not need a physical RAID controller to have RAIDed disks. Software RAID works just fine. You could buy an enclosure like the one you listed and still have all the benefits of RAID.

Also, eight 500 GB drives in a RAID 5 will give you 3.5 TB if usable space. You can buy a portable 4 TB USB 3 HDD drive for less than $100. Alternatively, 2 TB SSDs are about $200.

Keltari
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