Thinking about buying a couple pcDuino3 Nano Lite's for $15 each and installing armbian on a SD and then connecting an external usb powered 2.5" HD to it. Think the USB port could even handle that? The pcDuino would just be powered by a 2A adapter. Want to see if I can try creating a glusterfs cluster with two of these.

The pcDuino3 Nano Lite features a SATA connector therefore using USB storage is weird. And while you can create a glusterfs consisting of 2 cheap nodes it's a really bad idea to run such a thing on inapproriate hardware (no ECC RAM --> no glusterfs)

What kind of speeds do you think i can get out of the sata connection on such boards? Do you think the cheap $1 sata/power adapters that are made for the banana pi will work with it? i think i read that they might be inverted, but supposedly the cables work for the cubieboards too.

Please use the already existing documentation sources (and read also through the links carefully):

 

http://linux-sunxi.org/Sunxi_devices_as_NAS

 

http://linux-sunxi.org/LinkSprite_pcDuino3_Nano#SATA_power_connector