Argon EON PI NAS - Unboxing, Building, Setup - Almost my favorite Raspberry Pi accessory

[@godelrt]

I’m glad you pointed out “design over functionality” when it comes to hard drive formats… your comment is right on. Someone got fixated on the shape coz it looked “cool” then thought oh crap how do we fit any hard drives in this? I got an idea.. we can fit 4! But 2 of them have to be 2.5”… cool cool cool

[@BrianThomas]

I love it 8:26. "Oh, that's what those holes are for." You sound like me bro. Great 👍🏾 video

[@RaidOwl]

😅

[@moorevfr]

I just spent a morning a few days ago repurposing a RPi 3b I had doing nothing into a NAS. Was so fun to setup and now I want something like this to tidy it up.

[@flhrci1]

On sale at Microcenter for $99. Picked up one today.

[@RimfireNZ]

I built a little NAS with one of the Argon One cases and a SATA M2 drive. Same problem with speed - it's unusably slow.

What about the changes that Argon 40 have (and have not!) talked about? You didn't mention the addition of an up-facing internal USB port so that you could mount an NVMe or SATA M.2 on an adapter board and boot from that. Did you wonder what ever happened to the cover that was originally meant to go over the GPIO pins out the back? They made some other changes you didn't seem to notice, and that Argon 40 have not "come out" about... Namely the addition of a pair of RCA-jack sized punch-outs in the rear panel, along with a mysterious connector on the bottom PCB in that "space" in the case. I suspect an add-on upgrade to add an Audiophile Hi-Fi DAC like their Nanosound ONE variant of the Argon ONE case. There are other un-documented connections as well as what appear to be a couple of internal mounting points in there too... if you are curious enough to notice. I think this is ultimately intended as an HTPC as much as a light-weight NAS. I was also a backer and have been pretty happy with the case overall. The bonus internal USB is a welcome upgrade for having to wait a little longer. I would have liked glass side panels too, but don't know how that would have affected the bill of materials. And it was only a little longer than originally promised... I have backed other stuff that is now (thanks, pandemic) taking much, much longer, if it ever materializes. Crowd-funding is a gamble, not a purchase. That can be a little hard to swallow when things go sideways. At least Argon 40 delivered! And having prior positive interactions with their customer support over a bum port-extender PCB on my Argon ONE M.2 case, I have the warm feelies for the company. Good customer service matters A LOT.

[@NFMorley]

Thanks for uploading this - I've been considering moving to a RPi powered nas so very useful! Only thought is perhaps the limit of 2x 3.5 inch drives is a power thing also... IIRC those draw about 10w vs 4w for smaller form factors!? Mind you, the PSU supplied is 12v 6A so maybe it was just design.

[@abe677]

Thanks for the video. The two-3.5-inch and two-2.5-inch thing is quite odd. Not sure the pretty-factor will be enough to overcome that shortcoming.

[@montecorbit8280]

@Raid Owl Querry: Do you think this would have been a better machine if the makers of it had used a compute module 4 or cm4 and broke out on to a daughter board to use most of the functions? The cm4 seems to have a few desirable features over the standard b model. Thank you for your time; Monte

[@RaidOwl]

Yeah a cm4 would have been great since it has PCIe capabilities.

[@montecorbit8280]

@@RaidOwl I am not aware of anybody getting a graphics card working on a pie, but other things that can run on a four lane pcie slot could be cool....a couple of m.2 sata drives?? I cannot remember if the pcie slot is run over USB or not.... Maybe you should suggest it to the makers?? Later; Monte

[@kiraitachi]

​@@montecorbit8280 You can use thr PCIE for other stuff not only graphics card.....😊

[@epsileth]

Waiting to see if they release an updated version, like they do with their other cases.

[@RaidOwl]

One with the cm4 and support for 4 3.5” drives would be sick

[@MrShinig4mi]

I don't know if anybody else had this problem with this NAS but before doing RAID 0 or 1 with mdadm you have to format each disk in OMV otherwise you'll see the RAID but you can't mount it in OMV. GREAT VIDEO BTW

[@flhrci1]

Are there other hardware NAS solutions for the raspberry pi that do the same thing and are available?

[@jakubmarincic7543]

Why are those dips happening around 18:50?

[@RaidOwl]

Cache filling up then clearing. Pretty normal

[@hosjmanne]

awsome vid! You preffer the 8GB Pi over the 4BG Pi? want to build my own nas too. Not sure what Pi to use. I've got both on hand.

[@alpachino468]

As well as the internal drives, can you also attach external USB drives?

[@addohm]

Eon is on the home page. I'm curious about the power needs through. I can barely overclock a single m.2 on the pi4. Can't imagine 4 drives.

[@X86Ken]

So, other than looking pretty, what is the purpose of this case? I love my ONE M.2 case (which I currently use for my Pi-powered NAS using usb 3.0 external drives), but why would this be better?

[@RaidOwl]

Singular spot to store your drives, one power cable, but for the most part…ehh

[@AndrewMcNulty1986]

What program do you use?

[@peterg4527]

Awesome Video would love to see more metrics on power usage as that would be the main reason I would consider picking this up over a 2 bay Synology or similar Keep up the great work!

[@veneratedmortal4369]

Get the synology.

[@CrystallisedEntertainment]

Hey I like your video! Just wondering if you know the reason why OpenMediaVault doesn't support being installed with an OS with a Desktop Environment? I realise it is pointless to have one for a NAS, but I still would like to know what the technical reasoning why it specifically needs Raspbian Lite?

[@Mister_Phafanapolis]

A strange combination of jank and cool. Love the looks but the function leaves some things left to be desired.

[@MarcHeyer]

Great video and review. Thank you. Can you read s.m.a.r.t values with this? I know that most USB connections don´t support reading smart values and it is a big downside for me. I mainly want to use these type of systems as a backup solution for the main server and want to know if a drive is going bad before it fails.

[@sunnygalli]

I wonder if they will make a squat version that can hold 4 3.5in HDD rather then 2? If they release a CM4 Version, I hope they offer an upgrade kit.

[@7MBoosted]

I was thinking that this would be really cool. Then learning no native raid functionality in OMV, the cost, and the limitations of only 2x 3.5" drives makes me think I'm just going to run truenascore or omv in a VM. Whoomp whoomp...

[@Mrphilippecarrier]

There are other silicon power SSDs than the A55 you used. If you go for an A58, you will get much better performance and TLC Flash. If you use the best of silicon power SSDs, they are great SSDs and I use them for unraid as well as for every day use without any issues and great performance. Keep in mind they are fairly cheap still, so they might not be in the Samsung realm, but great price to performance. They also have great write endurance (TBW), compared to other SSDs in the same price range.

[@Wayofthelao]

Tight

[@ReQuiem_2099]

This massive "form over function" choice seems so bizarrely misplaced in the rPi space. I'm building a x6 3.5" + Intel SBC NAS that would be roughly the same size, while conforming to a normal rectangular shape. Why would you go with this design when you could build such a simpler x4 3.5" design, so much easier?

Maybe it's ultimately intended for your living room... Read my other comment. I think they plan to have an audiophile HiFi DAC upgrade for this in the future. And it already has HDMI. HTPC much? We also don't know if this was originally going to be a 2-disk case earlier in it's design process and they decided, hey, there's room to squeeze in a couple 2.5" drives too, so why not? They added an internal USB port for an NVMe or SATA M.2 to USB adapter at the last minute, which this video makes no mention of, even though it's right there... look closer at the "SATA" board. I think they wanted to give you a case for your light-duty NAS build that was pretty so you could show off your fun project. Why give it a cool-ass OLED display button with stats if it's meant to sit under your desk or something?

[@stewartgallagher5804]

Hi Raid Owl ... did you test downloading from the rasp pi nas? Im not getting best speeds.. on your video i see when you switched to hdd that it did fall and rise a little but then stuck around 100mb... minss uploaded at full speed at first.. my download from it was around 80mb

[@mtstek]

The system time is wrong (set to about 100 years in the future) after installing Argon case script. The base OS is RPiOS 64-bit Lite. Try raspi-config and argon-config that doesn't correct problem. Have you noticed this issue with your system?

[@bastianb1024]

Nice video about a nice device. Thanks. I have a few question: will the HDD drives go into standby after a while of no access? Can you run the OS of one of the ssd drives. This should be much more reliable that the sd card.

[@RaidOwl]

You can set up the drives to go to standby in OMV. Yes, you can configure the pi to boot off of one of the ssds if you prefer. There are a few guides out there to get that set up.

[@RegisMazur]

@@RaidOwl Very good video, thanks. I’ve heard that you could also connect an nvme drive on a USB port, is it correct?

[@regularpit1508]

I just wanted it if could use it for RAID to back up my PC as a external backup. I'll probably procrastinate then buy a quality one I find on sale.

[@shubhasri25]

Can I use rock pi instead of raspberry pi? The advance I get it, it support emcc storage

[@hashnannurezaman]

Can i use 4x 3.5" HDD with sata extension cable?

[@BrianThomas]

Question: Aside from PiOS and Open Media Vault. What other NAS can you use with the raspberry pi?

[@rjbrowning85]

Thank you for the review. I was a little disappointed by the results of this project. I was hoping that this could be a cheap, simple NAS to get me started, but it looks like my money would be better spent on something more robust.

[@BadKarma714]

I thought it’s called a daughter board? Good video

[@jmonsted]

If they had based it on the pi compute module, they could have avoided the USB-SATA junk.

[@RaidOwl]

agreed

[@HusniArsyah]

Comparing to Synology and Qnap, this Argon kinda not practical to used huh? (That command prompt, etc)

[@Lvl_5_Magikarps]

Can somebody explain why people would want hdd over an ssd? When it comes to storage space?

[@RaidOwl]

Cost and capacity.

[@rogerpettersson89]

Would be interesting to see if it is possible to install TrueNAS (know running TrueNAS on SD card is not recommended) But maybe with 2 quality USB in ZFS mirroring for TrueNAS installation. Also see if it is possible to run ZFS RAIDz1 with an ssd cache and an SSD for SLOG through the USB connection. If this is possible then I would buy this product 😊

[@michaelreed9048]

TrueNAS does not currently support ARM processors, so maybe an Intel sbc could get you there, but not a Pi.

[@paulhol6669]

So I just tried to set mine up last night but when I log into my openmediavault page in the browser I don't get any of those widgets (cpu utilization) etc, it's blank. Anyone else had this issue?

[@RaidOwl]

Which version of OMV are you running?

[@scottwinterroth]

Thank you! Just some quick feedback, your videos are so dark I can't see the product.

[@HelloHelloXD]

17:06 1MB/s Winner! ;-)

[@RaidOwl]

*pain*

[@GeoStreber]

@@RaidOwl that's why I stay away from QLC SSDs and I recommend to everyone not to use them. It's TLC for everything.

[@joelang6126]

This is perfect for someone who needs a NAS in their bedroom that's silent. QNAP had one but their software is trash.

[@edmundpierce5672]

It seems as though there are no instructions included...

What’s the benefits of having a 4 bay NAS that can’t use RAID? 🤦🏻

[@RaidOwl]

You CAN but yeah in this specific case it’s not the most efficient

@@RaidOwl yep, you said that in the video but it’s not an easy solution for “the mere mortal” :) But the design is great 👌🏼

[@nevoyu]

Umm omv is a debian environment....

[@RaidOwl]

Correct…

[@veneratedmortal4369]

For the price of this you may as well get an i3 matx build.

[@mathieuleclerc4136]

I feel like I can have the EON way faster then a Pi

[@meeDamian]

Dunno where my previous comment went, but I wanted to add this to it: For that I'll even forgive you using the likely-NSA-compromised ECDSA, but please do switch to the far superior ed25519 🙏🏻.

[@ianrickey208]

Good Lord man, those are some really pink lips. Not judging.

[@RaidOwl]

I moonlight as a…wait…nvm

[@danielcic]

Eon ist die letzte Abzock und Gauner Firma. Ich habe schlechteste Erfahrungen mit dem fiesen Konzern und kann jeden und jede nur vor Eon warnen!!!

[@gregorywilkins1001]

OMV on RBP stinks for running a real NAS

[@Actio83]

WARNING! Do not follow this build guide, its completly useless. He skipps all important parts, shows the back of the unit and forgets to put on the thermal pads. Dont even warn about itin post.

[@RaidOwl]

Agreed! Dude sucks!

[@ImperialDog1999]

dont buy this nas too hot,airflow suck and fan suck

[@jairrossettofilho1189]

YES, it's cool, but, I will not to by...