CWWK Pocket NAS Review: Speed Tests, Windows 11, TrueNAS, & More!

[@besnico]

I've been eying this thing for the longest time - your video pushed over the wall to get it. Awesome content, clean, straightforward, no BS. Would have loved to see you setup the SMB transfer properly to make use of the 5G link but maybe that's something for a future video

[@danielr.3942]

Thanks for this great video! Love it! Regarding LAG: Copy two files simultaniousliy and you will see the 5 GBits/s. Thats the nature of link aggegration... Like a motorway with two lanes but same speedlimit. It can trasport two cars at once but none can go faster than the 2,5 GBits/s. With TCP you will see file copy at 5 GBits/s because the traffic is split up in packets and sent over the two landes. -CIFS / SAMBA cant' unless you use SMB3 only + enable multichannel.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

14:25 link aggregation is not true joining, connections are load balanced and will go on both ports, but windows file sharing is still a single connection so it can only go on one port or the other. To allow windows file sharing to use both ports, you need to enable SMB multi-channel feature in the NAS so the file sharing software can run multiple connections

[@juliocazares]

Truly a great video, It is a nice balanced little box and both models are reasonable priced and capable. Usually I use TrueNAS in old frankensteins from Haswell era, but 35 watts and 4 SSD capable turns this box into an very tempting upgrade options.

[@4eyesleo]

12x5=60W, mathematically one can power it via USB-C PD, but I'm not an engineer. This DC-power kills the whole "pocket" idea if you ask me. But it has so many other applications. Great product!

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Absolutely agree, they should add USB-C PD support.

[@ChrisPanton]

Looking to get the N100 for plex, home assistant snd Immich. think it can handle it all?

[@MrPir84free]

I was interested in this unit, now am less interested in this unit. If it had a 5th slot to stick in a NVME/SSD in a shortened M.2 slot, I'd likely take it. IF the design allowed for an EMMC device inside & included as an option, I'd consider it too. But with 4 NVME's only, not worth the effort if the one drive is needed for the OS.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

That's a good point! You could also consider installing the OS onto a USB drive and booting directly from that. It’s just an option, but your criticism is definitely valid.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

​@@TechnicallyUnsureoses that cache/log/write a lot to system drive will kill the USB drive very fast

[@arkinjade355]

you can you use wifi slot for nvme

[@affieuk]

@@BoraHorzaGobuchul Get an external NVMe case or a USB to SATA adapter, yes jank, but it works.

[@BoraHorzaGobuchul]

@@affieuk that's exactly that, jank. And yes, it works :)

[@Manne4711]

Would this work with 8TB NVMe SSD?

[@chriskeach1908]

What about putting 4 x NVME to SATA adapters in and running 16 to 20 drives off of it 😁

[@ChrisCebelenski]

So .. many ..compromises. Yeah, that's bifurcating the M.2 to split it four ways - probably an x4 split by 4, so 1x1x1x1 which would give you 1-2GB/s per drive depending on gen 3 or 4. Not great, but then again you've only got 2x2.5GbE ports to push it out of, so it will saturate that. Really, if you're going to dump your cash into nice SSD's then they really should be in a better platform. Go get a MS-01 for example. Yes, more money, but so much more capability.

[@frankwong9486]

maybe use one of the m2 slot and put on a m2 to 10gbe network card , max out about 8Gbps but still got good speed like a 3 nvme + 1 sata 10G nas ( the board have 2 sata port but it only come with 1 sata cable ) the model without case which is p5-x86 with carrier board , it come with 2 sata cable and i am using one of it. ( looks messy without a proper case )

[@srvuk]

If all of the messing around that was shown is the norm then it doesn't bode well for a first impression. The box said Mini PC, their website says Firewall PC and this video says NAS. Not exactly clear what primary purpose this thing is trying to serve. If I read things correctly (note that the website does not show complete specifications despite the link that says otherwise), the 4 NVME drives are connected to a single controller, so when used as a NAS, showing what speeds the drives run at when all in use at the same time is always going to be invaluable. When used as a NAS the cheaper N100 would seem to make more sense because the speed of the processor is not key to the operation. When used as a MINI PC, the N305 does give enough of a boost over the N100. What about an N97 version? All in all it didn't grab me enough, despite the potential uses. It feels only part thought through but could have potential.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

it has no primary purpose, it can be mini pc and firewall without the adapter that bifurcates the nvme to mount 4x ssds, and with the adapter it can be a NAS.

[@Rushil69420]

That M.2 --> 4x NVME breakout board is really interesting. I wonder if it can be made to work in other systems?

[@efimovv]

Good question. If it really 1 lane of PCIe then yes. But then it must cost like half of this device. On the other side - if it has PCIe x4 and splitted into 4 PCIe devices this woud be cheap and impossible to use on other systems as it depend on PCIe bifurcation settings in BIOS.

[@mrpurpleman9698]

on the cwwk site its listed as as separate purchase and only compatible with cwwk n100/300 units.

[@Rushil69420]

@@mrpurpleman9698 i wonder if they’d say that just because of the additional power supply coming off the motherboard

[@saorikido227]

I'm running TrueNAS Scale with five SSDs (using an M.2 Wi-Fi adapter for the OS). Everything generally works fine, but every 1-2 days, one of my four SSDs (sometime two) disconnects. Restarting the system in TrueNAS doesn't bring the drive back, but if I completely shut down and power it back on, the SSD reconnects. I'm starting to wonder if this is a hardware or BIOS issue. Has anyone else experienced something similar? At this point, I'm questioning whether this is a reliable setup for a NAS where stability is crucial.

[@Kyunomi-j6z]

Hi @saorikido227, are you able to share the adapter you used?

[@jmcabgam]

Great review!!! Did you say (4:14) sata 1 and data 2? It cloud be possible to attached 2 ssd (with an aditional wire I guess) at the same time??? Thanks!!!

[@thetailwind]

Also interested. I wonder if there is a sata to another M.2 adapter I could tuck in there for the OS instead of the USB approach

[@siddhantpanhalkar3739]

Hi ​@TechnicallyUnsure, thank you for the nice detailed video. I am planning to build my own NAS. I saw your other video which shows NAS using Radxa Rock and Pi 5. Which one would you recommend Cwwk or the Rock/Pi. Also in the Cwwk we cannot make use of all the 4 nvme right as you installed OS on one of the drive.

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Well, CWWK will run Windows, Rock 5 and Pi 5, they can't, so depends on your needs, if you just want to use it as NAS, with CWWK your options are basically anything (TrueNAS core, TrueNAS scale, Unraid, ...), with Rock 5 and Pi 5, you have to go with OpenMediaVault etc. Additionally, I believe CWWK processor is faster. As for SSD, you are correct. You'll have to use one SSD for OS

[@xXxCowsWithGunsxXx]

You should clarify that the $250 price you mentioned is for the barbones system, not the system you reviewed.

[@craigprocter1232]

omg.. EVERY NAS system ever is always mentioned at it's "bare bones" price - because almost every user will put different sized storage in it. seriously smh at this comment. It's not like he's reviewing an external USB storage drive which only comes in one storage capacity.

[@mynameiszakk]

…seriously?

[@carlosmiguel2610]

Actually it seemed to me that it came with 8 gb of ram and a 120gb ssd

[@Warriorsito]

The fact that you couldn't install the os on the ssd is cringing me out... Do you have any plans of trying to contact Cwwk to get some clairment on the topic?

[@LaurentDebackerBE]

He used TrueNAS Core, based on FreeBSD, instead of TrueNAS Scale which is based on Linux. Since he could setup Ubuntu, it's possible that TrueNAS Scale could have been setup on SATA

[@Warriorsito]

@@LaurentDebackerBE You talked like arab to me lol. Did not get what u tryna say :C

[@DoctorZXXI]

Hello, thanks for your video. Can we only use 2 of 4 NVME slots or it is mandatory use all of them?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You can use 1 or 2 or 3 or 4, you don't have to use all available slots

[@dktol56]

Is there a way to mount the 2.5" SATA SSD inside the case (lid??)? How about routing the SATA cable outside the case?

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

I tried, you can't put an SATA SSD inside and you can't route the cable without pinching it super tightly that might damage the cable (eventually)

[@Warriorsito]

Where can i buy this? I cannot find it online

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Updated the video description with the link

[@Warriorsito]

​@@TechnicallyUnsure I had found it but you're still the best for posting it 🎉

[@jimmyTimtam]

The network ports are both 2.5gbps

[@LaurentDebackerBE]

If you want to build a NAS, TrueNAS is a great choice, but DO NOT configure the disks as shown on the video. The video is effectively doing a RAID0, so you would lose all your data if one of the SSD failed. OpenZFS (the filesystem used by TrueNAS), is simply "concatenating" all vdevs (virtual devices) into the pool, but each vdev must have multiple drives if you need resilience against drive failure. If you want to use 4 drives, avoid doing 2 vdevs of 2 drives each in RAIDz1, instead do one vdev of 4 drives in RAIDz2. You would get the same usable capacity, but it could survive the loss of any 2 drives. Of course, you can do RAIDz1 with 3 or 4 drives, but losing maximum one drive.

[@TimHunold]

Nice Franck Muller Nautilus!

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

You’ve got a keen eye! Thanks for tuning in!

[@TimHunold]

@@TechnicallyUnsure I am a watch guy, I really want the Koi, and the crazy/jump hours. I just don't know what I have to pull from my winders to make space for it.

[@joshhardin666]

each one of those drives wants m.2 pcie 4x4 which would give you ssd speeds of roughly 7000MB/s. it LOOKS like they are instead giving each m.2 pcie slot pcie 4x1 which would give you something like 1750MB/s which is TERRIBLE compared to the specs of the drive. Secondly, if you're going to do an m.2 NAS, it should have AT LEST 10gb/s networking (preferably 2-4 ports of 10g).

[@dktol56]

The Alder Lake-N (N105, N305, etc) cpu's only have 9 PCIe gen 3 (not gen 4) lanes available. Not many lanes to work with for both storage and networking. One per NVMe drive is typical, and since each is gen 3, the throughput is half what you stated. Yes, it's terrible, but acceptable if you temper your expectations. Use it with cheap slow NVMe's for backup - still better than a Raspberry Pi NAS. And forget about 10GbE.

[@joshhardin666]

@@dktol56 ugh, I didn't realize the n cpus had such absolute crap for pcie lanes. that's like single-board computer territory o_O. and here i've been complaining that modern consumer desktops have too few lanes for a few generations now... sheesh. In that case I wouldn't use one of those cpus at all, and instead opt for one of Intel's low-powered Atom CPUs, like the "Oops all e-cores" fanless-optional atom c3758r (8 ecores, no hyperthreading). it's got 20 pcie lanes, onboard 4x 10gb networking. so if you exposed all those lanes you could easily do at least 4 m.2 ssd's at full gen3x4. or heck, a modern i3 or ryzen 3 could do the same with gen4 (or gen5?) while still giving you proper networking to support them, or for a more balanced solution, 2x gen3x4 m.2's and a gen3x8 sas3 16e hba that you could then use to plug in one or more JBODs (if you have the space - could make a good cheap 1u rackmount for homelabbers.

[@Scottdvz]

@@joshhardin666 Even the all nvme NAS from Asus & QNAP have the same performance issue with PCIe lanes. Since you are limited by the speed of the NIC's, I guess they believe it's not that big of a deal.

[@marcogenovesi8570]

this is not meant for high performance SSDs anyway, it's going to get the cheap dramless SSDs. Those aare simply NOT able to sustain anywhere near 7GB/s for more than a few dozen GB then the SLC cache fills and they settle down to slower speed.

[@joshhardin666]

@@marcogenovesi8570 in that case, i'd fear for write endurance. cheap dramless ssd's generally don't last for very long.

[@sativagirl1885]

if your're homeless, a shopping cart can carry your pocket NAS, but watch out for thieves!

[@benjiro8793]

Cwwk strikes again ... The Idle power consumption is just bad for a n100. I have this little Chuwi N100 Larkbox around, and that runs on 4W idle with a peek of 18W. For some reason they make these mini devices and never pay attention to the actual power consumption.

[@Scottdvz]

It's an i3-N305 not a n100, see 7:39

[@rochellerochelle1488]

06:33 that's Windows 10! You trying to gaslight us or something? I mean, more than trying to sell us a no name no ECC 1 lane per NVME SSD mini PC as a NAS product???

[@TechnicallyUnsure]

Sorry, I really didn't notice it's Win10 as I was installing Win11 on all SBCs I was testing, don't remember using Win10, that being said, this PC supports Win11 as well, plus, not selling anything, sharing what I find and test online

[@cenonmin]

So can hook up the sata cable to an SSD and boot off that so that you can use all the NVME slots and set those up in RAID 5?