u/ubaid888

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## Hardware

- **Erying Q1J4** (Core i5-1340P, Raptor Lake mobile-on-desktop board) from AliExpress

- **32GB DDR5 RAM** from Amazon AU

- **LSI 9305-16i HBA** (16-port) from Taobao

- **Jonsbo N6** case from AliExpress

- **EVGA 550 GT** PSU

- **5x 10TB SAS** (NetApp X380) from FB Marketplace

- **4x 8TB SAS** (X376) from FB Marketplace

A note on the HBA: I originally had an 8-port card (IBM M5110 / SAS2308), but with 9 drives I hit its 8-drive limit. I returned it and moved to the 9305-16i, which has 16 ports, so all 9 drives connect with room to spare.

## Installation

I connected all the drives to the N6 backplane. The HBA slot took some work. This board's slot layout meant I had to order a PCIe riser (x4 to x8) to physically fit and connect the card.

One thing worth knowing if you buy used enterprise SAS drives: they sometimes come formatted at 520-byte sectors instead of the standard 512, which is common on drives pulled from enterprise arrays. Linux reports them as 0 bytes in that state. The fix is sg_format to convert them to 512-byte sectors. Five of my drives needed this, so I ran sg_format on them (in parallel to save time) and they came up fine afterwards.

## Software

I spent a while torn between Unraid and OMV with SnapRAID and MergerFS. I went with OMV because it is free, flexible, has no lock-in, and SnapRAID's checksumming appealed to me for protecting long-term data.

Using an LLM to guide me through the process, I got the whole stack running as separate Proxmox containers and VMs:

- **Proxmox** as the hypervisor

- **OMV** for storage, running SnapRAID (dual parity) and MergerFS, giving roughly 62TB usable, all on XFS

- **Jellyfin** in an LXC, with Intel Quick Sync hardware transcoding (iGPU passed into the container)

- **Nextcloud** for files and documents

- **Immich** for family phone photo backups

- **AdGuard Home** for network-wide DNS ad blocking

- **Homepage** as the dashboard tying it all together

As a first-timer, having an LLM walk me through the HBA passthrough, the sg_format process, the LXC iGPU permission mapping, and the SnapRAID config turned what would have been days of forum-diving into a guided build.

The drives I picked up used enterprise SAS drives off ebay and FB Marketplace:

5x 10TB SAS (NetApp X380): these came in 520 byte sector which required overnight format.

4x 8TB SAS (X376)

That is 82TB raw for a fraction of the cost of new drives. All 9 came back with a clean SMART report.

Build

Jonsbo N6 case

Erying Q1J4 board (Core i5-1340P, Raptor Lake mobile-on-desktop)

LSI 9305-16i HBA in IT mode. I started with an 8-port card but 9 drives needed the 16-port.

32GB DDR5, EVGA 550 GT PSU

Fitting the HBA meant ordering a PCIe riser (x4 to x8) because of the board's slot layout.

The array

I went with OMV running SnapRAID (dual parity) and MergerFS, giving roughly 62TB usable. All drives are XFS.

I used Claude Desktop/Co-pilot as assistant to set these up.

Hardware

Erying Q1J4 (Core i5-1340P, Raptor Lake mobile-on-desktop board) from AliExpress

32GB DDR5 RAM from Amazon AU

LSI 9305-16i HBA (16-port) from Taobao

Jonsbo N6 case from AliExpress

EVGA 550 GT PSU

5x 10TB SAS (NetApp X380) used from FB Marketplace

4x 8TB SAS (X376) used from ebay

A note on the HBA: I originally had an 8-port card (IBM M5110 / SAS2308), but with 9 drives I hit its 8-drive limit. I returned it and moved to the 9305-16i, which has 16 ports, so all 9 drives connect with room to spare.

Installation

I connected all the drives to the N6 backplane. The HBA slot turned out to be the tricky part. This board's slot layout meant I had to order a PCIe riser (x4 to x8) to physically fit and connect the card.

Then came the unexpected part: the 520-byte sector saga. The SAS drives showed up as 0 bytes in Linux. It turned out they were enterprise-formatted at 520-byte sectors, which is common on NetApp pulls. I had to run sg_format on all five 10TB drives to convert them back to 512-byte. This was an overnight job running all five in parallel.

Software

I spent a while torn between Unraid and OMV with SnapRAID and MergerFS. I went with OMV because it is free, flexible, has no lock-in, and SnapRAID's checksumming appealed to me for protecting long-term data.

Using an LLM(Claude Cowork) to guide me through the process, I got the whole stack running as separate Proxmox containers and VMs:

Proxmox as the hypervisor

OMV for storage, running SnapRAID (dual parity) and MergerFS, giving roughly 62TB usable, all on XFS.

Jellyfin in an LXC, with Intel Quick Sync hardware transcoding (iGPU passed into the container)

Nextcloud for files and documents

Immich for family phone photo backups

AdGuard Home for network-wide DNS ad blocking

Homepage as the dashboard tying it all together

As a first-timer, having an LLM walk me through the HBA passthrough, the sg_format process, the LXC iGPU permission mapping, and the SnapRAID config turned what would have been days of forum-diving into a guided build.