Radxa ROCK Pi 4 is a single board computer (SBC) powered by Rockchip RK3399 hexa-core processor and inspired by Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+.
The company has now designed ROCK Pi SATA HAT expansion board to design 4-bay NAS based on Raspberry Pi 4 and ROCK Pi 4.
There are 3 models with support for 2, 4 or 5 drives:
- Dual/Quad SATA HAT connected over two USB 3.0 ports and working with both boards
- Penta SATA HAT connected over PCIe and compatible with ROCK Pi 4 only
ROCK Pi Dual/Quad SATA HAT
Specifications:
- 2x or 4x SATA connectors supporting 2.5″ or/and 3.5″ HDD/SSD
- 2x USB 3.0 port to connect to RPi 4 via one or two JMS561 USB to SATA controllers
- Storage Features – HDD suspend mode, UASP, software RAID 0/1/5
- Misc
- Fan and heatsink header for Raspberry Pi 4 CPU cooling
- Optional PWM control fan for HDD heat dispatching
- Optional OLED display for IP Address/Storage info
- Power Supply
- 1x USB Type C power input with USB PD/QC to power both the SBC and 2.5″ drives
- External standard ATX power supply support for 3.5″ HDD
You can see the Raspberry Pi 4 connected to four 3.5″ SATA drives plus an external power supply (60W+ required), and Raspberry Pi4 connected to 4 2.5″ drive plus the SATA HAT Top Board with fan, a power button, and an OLED display to show information such as IP address and storage information.
The company provides a utility to control the top board:
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curl -sL https://rock.sh/get-rockpi-sata-hat | sudo -E bash - |
The system can deliver up to 400MB/s sequential reading/writing performance with four disks in RAID0 mode. You’ll find additional details in the Wiki.
Penta SATA HAT
The penta SATA HAT does not work on the Raspberry Pi 4 because it relies on the M.2/PCIe interface on ROCK Pi 4 to offer up 5x SATA ports, namely up to four SATA port, and one eSATA port for external drives.
Specifications:
- 4x SATA interfaces + 1x eSATAp for up 100TB storage via 5x 2.5″ or 3.5″ HDD/SSD
- Host Connection – Flat cable with 2-lane PCIe 2.1 via JMB585 PCIe to SATA controller
- Storage Features – HDD suspend mode, software RAID 0/1/5
- Misc
- Optional PWM control fan for HDD heat dispatching
- Optional OLED display for IP/Storage info
- Power Supply
- 1x USB Type C power input with USB PD support for both 2.5″ HDD/SSD and ROCK Pi 4
- External standard ATX power supply support for 3.5″ HDD
Rock Pi 4 SBC connected to five 3.5″ SATA hard drives, including on eSATA drive. Performance is quite better over the USB solution for the first design, as the Penta SATA HAT can achieve up to 803 MB/s with 5 SSD’s attached in RAID0 mode. Check out the Wiki for more information.
RPi 4 NAS Enclosure
This is all good, but if you don’t quite feel making your own case, Radxa will also offer the one shown below.
The SATA HAT Top Board (with fan) is supposed to be at the top of the NAS, so maybe they could consider some ventilation holes at the top as well.
At this stage, we do not have availability nor pricing information, but it will certainly be cost-effective. [Update: the boards and kit can now be pre-ordered as follows:
- $25 Quad SATA HAT for Raspberry Pi 4 / Rock Pi 4
- $49 Penta SATA HAT for Rock Pi 4
- $8 SATA HAT Top Board
- $99 for Quad SATA kit for Raspberry Pi 4 with enclosure. Raspberry Pi 4 not included.
See comment for purchase link]
Jean-Luc started CNX Software in 2010 as a part-time endeavor, before quitting his job as a software engineering manager, and starting to write daily news, and reviews full time later in 2011.
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