They can work fine for a long time but the risk is higher.
I started with an external HDD on a desktop PC connected by USB3.0 and it worked fine for 2 or 3 months, when the first disconnect happened, my USB port overheated and shut down… Had to switch the port for it to work again. Some other months later my enclosure became unreliable, disconnecting the drive and causing some partition corruption.
It’s manageable and many people have less problems than I did (and those runnning PIs seem to be doing even better) but it’s a higher risk than running internal drives.
At the moment I use an esata enclosure which works good too.
So you can go for external drives, especially at the beginning. Overheating of the usb port will likely only occur during high load once the drive gets fuller. I would definitely start with an external drive.
What part of a USB “port” overheats? You mean the controller chip either on the host or the device? I’ve seen USB power bricks (cell phone & etc. chargers) that have overcurrent protection that will cut power to a port if it exceeds a certain draw, maybe the same is being incorporated in PCs now.
It’s not that USB ports themselves overhead. It’s that USB cases are usually built with no proper heat dissipation. See e.g. 1, 2, 3 for examples how people add fans to USB cases so that they do decent cooling.
I’m completly new to this but I’m looking to host a node at my place. I have Raspberry Pi 4B - 4GB laying around and I’m looking for a good hard drive to buy for this.
Can I actually connect a Western Digital 14TB HC530 drive to a Raspberry Pi and use it as a valid node?
I don’t see why not… You just need a SATA 3 interface and power.
Check out this example. Since I do not use a raspberry Pi maybe other members like @twl can add perspective.
that example that stuberman provided, is for a setup with an Odroid-H2+, which is a bit more powerful than a Raspberry Pi, has native SATA ports, and currently are hard to find due to the market shortages.
Yep, you need a SATA to USB external enclosure (or adapter or dock) since the Raspi lacks SATA ports. Make sure to get an enclosure/adapter/dock with its own power supply unit.
I’ve got 3 drives connected on my RPi3 using one of these: https://www.newegg.com/orico-6638us3-c-v1-us-bk-dock/p/0VN-0003-00157
The RPi3 only gets USB 2.0 speeds tho so I’m missing out on some of the potential of this dock. An RPi4 with its USB 3.0 ports would do better with it.
One thing to keep in mind: it’s rarely explicitely said on cases’ specification sheets unfortunately, but you shoud try to find a case with a physical power switch (or no switch at all) to be sure that in case of a power outage your drive restarts automatically. Otherwise it will stay off when power comes back, and your RPi won’t be able to mount it anymore unless you manually restart the disk (and potentially the RPi too).
As an example, here is one with a physical switch (I’m using it with my RPi4B):
As a side note, unless Storj newtork activity goes up, filling up 16TB will take years.
If you happen to have a smaller disk laying around, might be better to start with it instead of buying a new one ^^
Just so you know
Fortunately I noticed in time that it can take a long time before reaching 16TB, so I orded a 4TB WB Gold edition. I won’t get my money back quickly but still, worst case I have a 4TB back-up drive for myself. And ofcourse the experience to try this out (kinda excited about it? xD)
Like comparing F-15 and bulldozer
For the storagenode as is and customers it’s doesn’t matter.
But for performance - please avoid using SMR for storagenode, you will have problems sooner or later.
The only workaround for SMR is to run multiple nodes on separate disks, because it will reduce load on SMR and gives it a time to breath.
I’ll have to remember that one whenever another member asks this question! 
