You can buy a DAS (Direct Attached Storage) enclosure[1], some even support RAID. If your Nuc is multipurpose, you could then run a virtualized TrueNAS (BSD or linux) guest in QEMU and give it access to your DAS block device for ZFS pools and run your virtual NAS on demand - TrueNAS has an excellent API you can use to start/stop services (SMB, SSH, iSCSI, etc) as well as shutdown the vm cleanly.

1. Newer DAS devices connect using USB-C, but USB type-A/e-SATA ones can be found.

Isn't running a NAS on top of USB storage very strongly discouraged? TrueNAS cautions against it.

I also want to set up a NAS on a mini-PC with some sort of attached external storage, but I haven't been able to get past this blocker. USB is the only external interface these mini PCs typically support.

You aren’t wrong. USB is not a good way to do this.

There are issues with USB from a compatibility standpoint. I think its mainly a factor of the ubiquity of it, there are SO many poor controller chips out there, even when you buy seemingly reputable hubs/drive cases. Its hard to find a good one sometimes. I did, however, stumble upon a gem early on, it was a 3.5" usb drive case from BestBuy which has since been discontinued(because it was good). Never in 15 years has any of the half dozen ones i got dropped from thier system. This is more than i could say about alot of pricey stuff on amazon sadly. Its typically manifested as a random loss in connectivity to the system.

Similarly, heres a very low power writeup I did for using 2.5" drives with a dedicated power hub/splitter. http://www.jofla.net/?p=00000106#00000106 This will still have issues if the mains lines sag (a pole goes down somewhere), but you can fix it with a reboot remotely. Other than that it works great.

This was/is definitely a labor of love, primarily as I've come from a time when all you could get for a server were huge boxes idling at 50 watts, so i felt guilty of all the power I used to consume.

> Isn't running a NAS on top of USB storage very strongly discouraged? TrueNAS cautions against it.

You're right, and I don't recommend USB as the only backup solution. I an old eSATA enclosure - not sure if that's an improvement over plain USB - as a secondary backup and keep the device on long enough to complete)

> I also want to set up a NAS on a mini-PC with some sort of attached external storage, but I haven't been able to get past this blocker

You could also buy a PCIe to multiport SATA (RAID) card, but you'll also need a bigger[1] NAS-like case[2] to house the hard drives and multiple power cables for the drives

1. Depending on how mini your PC is and how many drives you want to attach to it

2. I have noticed any case that's sufficiently NAS-like (hotswap trays) is sold at a premium.

Add a disk shelf :). Basically supplies power and data cabling for just a rack of drives. Those get interfaced with the NUC via a host based adapter.

Can you elaborate? What’s the economic way to do this?

Used PCIe HBA cards pulled from retired servers can be found on eBay for ~$50. They have external facing ports and/or internal facing ports. External is the way to go if you're using a small form factor PC like a business class Lenovo. These are almost all low profile cards, so they will fit in any SFF PC with a PCIe slot. There are special cables which will connect one port on the card to four SATA- or SAS-based disks.

The PC's PSU will need SATA power on its cables or else you'll need to scavenge a separate PSU and use the paper clip trick (or better yet, a purpose built connector) to get it to power things on without a motherboard connected.

Once you have all of that, then it's just a matter of housing the disks. People have done this with everything from threaded rod and plastidip to 3D printed disk racks to used enterprise JBOD enclosures (Just a Bunch Of Disks, no joke).

Total cost for this setup, excluding the disks, can easily be done for less than $200 if you're patient and look for local deals, like a Craiglist post for a bunch of old server hardware that says "free, just come haul it away".

Check or r/DataHoarder on reddit or ServeTheHome's blog

A NUC won't have PCIe expansion slots. You are pretty much stuck with the external ports that come with it.

It looks like some NUCs have M.2 adapter slots that allow PCIe. Seems possible to do with a NUC, you probably can't put 20 drives with it, but 12-16 extra drives sounds feasible.

https://www.reddit.com/r/intelnuc/comments/ibchlz/nuc_m2_sat...

they make external HDD chassis that connect via USB. I don't have any experience with them so I can't comment on their reliability, but search for "ORICO 5 Bay USB to SATA Hard Drive Enclosure".

FWIW, I wouldn't recommend Orico. I don't live in the US so my options are somewhat limited but I found a local retailer that carries Orico. I've had five of them in the past five years and four died within 12-18 months.

If it was just one, I'd put it down to random bad luck. But with that many failures I assume they are doing something stupid/cheap.

Usually they would simply fail to power on but sometimes individual slots seemed to die (which RAID just loooooves).

And having an entire enclosure fail and waiting days/weeks for a replacement sucks as you lose access to all your data.

I eventually bought a Jonsbo N3 off of Aliexpress and PCI SATA card (to support more than the 2-4 drives most motherboards support) and that has been working well for months.

I've never tried Orico, that was just the first brand that came up when I searched. I suspect these things are fundamentally unreliable, especially because they are powered by external AC adaptors, meaning there is no real ground between the two switching power sources (one in your PC, the other in the HDD caddy). It's either due to that, or due to the very sensitive signaling along the line, that eventually you get USB disconnects (if you try to run it as an appliance) that wreaks havoc on filesystems, particularly RAID.

The Jonsbo N3 is not comparable. I own one as well (how quiet is yours? I upgraded the rear fan but my CPU fan is noisy), but it's a complete PC case, not an external HDD array.

Highpoint has some decent-ish toaster-style drive docks. I have an a couple of the older model with dual drives dual usb-a ports - 5422A - but the Highpoint RocketStor 3112D seems available for $70 with a single 10Gbit usb-c port and dual drives.

There is one deeply troubling flaw to them though, they don't turn back on of the power goes out, until you physically hit the button again. I think this is alas all to common for many of these enclosures!

Thunderbolt/USB4 -> NVME enclosure -> M.2-to-SATA OR M.2-to PCIe to HBA-to-SATA.