Rock 5C + Penta SATA hat; should I buy one?

[dieselnutjob]

Hi

I am looking for a low power, fanless, solution for a Debian server with a single large 3.5" SATA drive.

I don't want to boot from the SATA so I guess I'd buy an eMMC module as well.

Currently I have an Orange Pi4 LTS with a weird expansion board and a generic Mini PCIe to SATA, but it isn't stable enough.

Given that the Rock 5C has platinum support and works with the Penta SATA hat I'm wondering if it might be more reliable?

thanks

[ChrisO]

Hi

I have a Rock5c with a Penta SATA hat and it works OK. It is the only (?) way of having several disk connected to Rock5c. Note, it cannot boot of the disks on the hat.

Have two SSDs and mirrored ZFS pool. No problems at all. Setting it up to act as Frigate server. The fifth SATA, in fact e-SATA connector comes very handy to connect a large disc for constant recording.

You may also consider Odroid HC4. I think it's the cheapest solution and it's fan is negligible 🙂 Have three of them, acting as mail/backup/HomeAssistant servers.

Had in the past some problems with USB but recent kernels are OK.

Hope it helps.