Raspberry Pi vs ASUSTOR NAS Head-to-Head Part 1 - Hardware

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Hey everyone! Marco here. Thank you Jeff for taking a look at our NAS! We thoroughly enjoyed our friendly competition with the Raspberry Pi. ;) For anyone with questions, comments, constructive criticism and praise, feel free to reply to this comment and I will get notifications for your comment and reply with my best answers. Remember to keep Red Shirt Jeff and the blowtorch away from the NAS. It prefers cool temperatures. Again. Thank you!

[@JeffGeerling]

I have been able to keep Red Shirt Jeff occupied with Dishy lately... but once it's out of the house, no guarantees!

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@JeffGeerling Uh oh. If that's gonna happen, might as well collab with Explosions and Fire.

[@JustinEmlay]

Thanks to you both for a great video!

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@JustinEmlay Thank you for watching!

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@JeffGeerling We should mention, that the riser card does not use standard PCIe pinouts. It is wired differently to provide two m.2 ports without switching hardware in one slot.

[@rnminster]

Thanks to Mrs. Jeff for the extra camera work. Great video.

[@JeffGeerling]

I'll tell my sister you said that 😆

[@blurvough]

Ok Jeff, here is the plan: You need to fork Open Media Vault, make some vaguely helpful tweaks to optimize the for Pi NAS, and re-name it Colada. You know, for the pun of it. Pi-nas Colada.

[@Astra7525]

... okay... have my angry +1 like

[@JeffGeerling]

Haha, you win for the joke. I will be using OMV in the next video though, so good call there!

[@paulmaydaynight9925]

actually the base Open Media Vault Debian image already has the known helpful tweaks to intentionally optimize the pi out the box ^_~ no knife or fork required... already compiled 'mc' with default smb support would be nice though to save a re-compile.

[@XennialGeek]

@@JeffGeerling ö

[@NilesBlackX]

This is a quality comment

[@kushalraj]

Role model for disclosure amongst the smaller channels. Love that I can trust everything you say more than some channels with 2-3 million subscribers. I hope your channel blows up someday! You deserve it!

[@chrisdoob]

I was watching one of these videos, my wife walked in, read “Pi NAS” started laughing and walked out. Real mature!

[@ronaldod7116]

At least she know something about hardware. I would get more an answer like "can you eat that" ?

[@tobiwonkanogy2975]

@@ronaldod7116 yes, yes you can . XD

[@dragonatorul]

Speaking as someone who's been wrangling with a bunch of NAS-ish solutions over the past few years, including PI NAS, I fully agree with her. It's been a fun journey and I'll continue with it, but it definitely isn't for everyone. Jeff is right, it's only good if you're a tech masochist.

[@paulmaydaynight9925]

@@dragonatorul lol, it can be a fun challenge, at least you dont need to make an obscure ROM call to low level your st/xt hard drives any more ^_~ im also enjoying the low subscription OneMarcFifty' channel , he deserve far more advocated subs, and ground floor seeding pr supplied tech kit ^_~ @ASUSTOR TV see his fun 10,000 sub's vid ,and his real pro scale practical diy content for fun 'OneMarcFifty 10,000 SUBSCRIBERS SPECIAL EPISODE' Mar 28, 2021

[@toolbaggers]

@@ronaldod7116 If feel sorry for your wife. Stop trying to insert your Pi Nas into the rear socket for your software problems. Don't overclock it too fast or you'll prematurely blow your hardware and you'll be stuck trying to plug and play your own legacy joystick.

[@samdeur]

thumbs up because you mentioned the whole SMR thing... The more consumers understand this the better for everyone of us..

[@patnutoris4054]

It would be nice if you also had included a single RPi4 4GB with 1-2HDD connected to USB3 and 1Gbit Ethernet, which is probably what 99% would have used for a home-built NAS.

[@betterwithrum]

Two drives? Gross! Where's your data for 99% of us? I watch this video and immediately went to eBay and bought a used Dell 720xd. If you look at most of the tech KZbin channels, everyone is running slightly used enterprise gear. Lawrence Systems, Jeff G, NetworkChuck, etc. For less then both of those setups you can have a decent NAS.

[@Somelucky]

The primary reason why I subscribed is because you aren’t afraid to show your pain and frustration... and of course it is entertaining.

[@aanthanyj]

PRIMARY reason?... 🤷🏼 Cool, not my reason, but thanks for sharing

[@HelgiWaag]

The "s" in smr stands for shingled, not shielded, afaik. Thats because each write slightly overlaps the write from the previous rotation, like roof tile shingles.

[@edgarmatzinger9742]

And what does this mean for long term storage? I mean 10 year plus. Do I needs ZFS on these with parity enabled?

[@samal3196]

@@edgarmatzinger9742 I know this is Very Late, but for posterity. Do Not use SMR HDDs for nas storage. The rebuild performance on a drive failure in an array is absolutely abysmal with SMR. Use them anywhere else but in a NAS array. ServetheHome, a website and youtube channel covers this topic in a LOT more detail.

[@mimimmimmimim]

@@edgarmatzinger9742 it means they'll fail...

[@jmkhenka]

​@@mimimmimmimim Not fail, neccesarily (one should always have backup though, RAID is not a backup!).. I have a IRL scenario, for myself. I "rescued" 4x6tb WD RED drives, SHR versions. To verify paridy on this raid 5 array it would take 18! days. Compare that with less then a day on 4x3TB WD Red in classic format. They are almost useless in such large arrays, so be carefull. As single or mirror they work great, unless you write 100's of GB at once.

[@Bermwolf]

Note to anyone buying Ironwolf. The value is in the RMA and warrenty. I bought 4 of these drives a little over 1 year ago and put them into a Synology device. For whatever reason, I have already had 1 drive trip the S.M.A.R.T and I had to do an RMA. Drives aren't infallible BUT I did find the Seagate RMA very straight forward. just a hint of salt.

[@johndododoe1411]

Don't Ironwolf drives contain the extra rotational vibration sensors to survive being stacked with other drives in a NAS.

[@Dygear]

Respect to the camera person, they were awesome!

[@questionablecommands9423]

7:59 Backblaze releases a yearly hard drive reliability report for all the drives in their infrastructure. It really replaces the anecdotal information surrounding brand reliability with fact.

[@JeffGeerling]

It is a good data point, for sure. I've followed their posts year after year. I wish more companies would release this kind of data-you know they have it for internal use.

[@carpandrei7493]

The best thing about a Pi NAS (or another SBC based NAS) is that it allows you to learn and test your concept, test your use case. Once you're done, you already have a good idea of what you look for in a NAS, buy "real" NAS and repurpose the PI for your next project. That's how it works for me: I have a Pi NAS that I've used for a year or so as storage for my multimedia collection and I use Kodi on several devices to access it. Now I know what I want, I already have a good ideea of a NAS device that would suit my needs, and once i can fork our the cash for new toys, the PI can take on it's next assignement.

[@petroff10]

Not even mad about waiting for a part 2. Really liked you talking along and showing the thought process behind everything, keep up the great work!

[@RidgeRacer]

Thank you for letting me know it's ok to enjoy watching you suffer through these setups. They're very entertaining.

[@rhiantaylor3446]

I built a PI4 NAS with a Seagate Backup Plus external USB drive which has 2x further USB3 ports i.e. a small built-in hub, this way I can run 4x drives in my NAS at USB3 speeds with a minimum of cabling and clutter. Works well provided you format drives to EXT, the NTFS format they came with will significantly reduce speeds as it doubles the CPU load on the PI.

[@izzieb]

Asustor... Sounds oddly similar to another company, but I can't quite think which right now.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

ASUS joint venture.

[@nysky911]

Is that FalconStor?

[@Gromran]

@@ASUSTOR_YT And probably just as shit as Asus

[@thientranduc-pu2nn]

I agree, it literally has SUS vibe in the name.

[@CowBoy_Anthony]

I thinks it’s dell

[@dktol56]

Looks like you have a 3rd persona, "Warp Speed Jeff". He deserves a new T-shirt color.

[@YahBoiiJose]

I've made my first NAS using OMV and a Raspberry PI4. Honestly, it just enough performance for what I need.

[@markusmcgee]

Super video! I applauded for $5.00 👏👏

[@-ColorMehJewish-]

I went w/ an RPi 4 (4GB) for my first NAS build I used two horizontal/flat HDD caddies/trays connected to the Pi4 @ USB3.0 headers Then I have the Pi in it's own case, but I purchased a laptop cooler w/ 4 fans to sit over the HDDs for some cooling while the Pi's case/CPU fan cools it well. Running OMV on it and it's been great for file storage and for my IP cameras to FTP to. It was relatively cheap, and I still get 5Gb/s speeds which beats the old 2.0 standard. I had a WD My Cloud 4TB for a while but it was HORRIBLE w/ small file xfer (or loading directories w/ many small files). But the Pi4 powers right through w/o a problem. Although I am limited at 2 HDDs (at USB3.0 speeds) it's a nice starter

[@DigitalJedi]

I have a NAS-berry Pi at home. It backs up my PC periodically and is otherwise not used for much. It's only got 4tb of hard drive space, but it's dirt cheap and works like a charm.

[@SchoolforHackers]

NAS-berry Pi. Nice.

[@utp216]

PART 2!!! 😭 I was hooked to this video and didn’t even notice it was getting near the end then saw the part 2 announcement... you’re kill’n me man!! 🤣

[@JeffGeerling]

If it's any consolation, I'm editing part 2 right now!

[@utp216]

@@JeffGeerling YES!!!! 🤘

[@knjpollard]

Pretty cool. For my needs, I used a Pi4 with USB 3 connected Sabrent dual bay. Did a raid1 with two drives and mdadm commands. Mounted it as /media/NAS. Created a Samba share called PINAS and that’s it. I’m on 1GB network so it matches up with Pi4 1GB network. Note: use the Pi4 as a JupyterHub as well connected to my pi Hadoop/Spark setup. The NAS enables me to get data from internet then loaded into my HDFS and Spark cluster.

[@pascalmartin1891]

I have a similar setup for two NAS: PI 4, USB3 dual bay. The result is a bit nerdy, but nowhere as unsafe as the contraption shown. Trying to coerce a PI to handle a 2.5 GB network and SATA drives looks like a way to blow the budget with expensive parts..

[@ryanwakebradtelle8682]

just wanted to compliment you, this video is good for entertainment ive seen it at least 3 times and its good for when im bored out of my mind at 3:am

[@IntraBratwurstParty]

Thank you for the creative built. Unfortunately the Pi system looks more complicated than I think is necessary. After looking at the X825 board from geekworm and other single board computers like pine64 rockpro64 with NAS dual HDD case I want to believe that there are more elegant solutions that challenge the price point of asustor.

[@CTSFanSam]

I had a Seagate NAS die on me last year. Its electronics died, thus leaving me with drives with data, but no way to do anything with it. So, I got a Pi and built a replacement. (Glad I had pretty much a full backup off line). So, I learned what I liked about the Pi as a NAS. One big feature of the Pi, if it dies, I have another one right here to get going again FAST. I learned my lesson about having hardware that couldn't be replaced. The Pi turned out to be a little slower than I cared for, so I got a refurb desktop, installed the Pi desktop on it, moved over the drives, and am mighty happy. The Pi is a learning machine, and I learned Linux is the way to go to drive a NAS. Replacement hardware is all over the place. I still have the Pi around in case the refurb desktop lets out its magic smoke. I also maintain off line backup of the data (media stuff). RAID 5 is nice, in case of hard drive failure. If the processor and its NOT off the shelf OS to drive the disks is not available, SAD story. Thanks to Pi, I got educated.

[@Frizar8417]

Don’t use raid 5, he is insidious, instills an imaginary sense of reliability. Raid 6, Mirroring plus, regardless of the choice, regular backup - good decision.

[@Jaabaa_Prime]

Regarding the requirement for NVME 2 drives before allowing "read/write cache", this is surely because the drives are mounted as RAID1, so that no data will be lost while writing in case of an NVME failing. If the "read only cache" drive fails then your data is still safe on the primary RAID.

[@fcoulloudon]

Jeff, for stability/data security purpose, you should connect both 0V of the two power supplies. Since both 5v/12v rails are isolated from the 110/220v, their relative voltage could differ. To prevent and static shocks, connect the two 0V together. Cheers!

[@LuisAlonzoRivero]

My boy getting his well earned sponsorships. Go Jeff!

[@aanthanyj]

This was not a sponsorship... I am thinking he made that clear ... Or I misunderstood him 😂

[@Gunhed507]

It's a good idea to mark either the bay or the hard drive with numbers, just to make sure you are putting them in correctly the next time you have out more than one.

[@justatiger6268]

I like a SMR drive because I like to listen to its humming noise. Very relaxing.

[@RN1441]

I used to always use WD RED drives for NAS setups until they decided to start screwing people over with SMR disks smuggled in to the product line. Now the Ironwolfs seem to be the only reliable choice on the market.

[@mattrogers6646]

Due to customer complaints, Western Digital reserves the WD Red Pro label for CMR and WD Red (non-Pro) are all SMR now.

[@johndododoe1411]

Because of the vibration protection, I won't use non-NAS desktop drives in NAS anymore. Also from sad experience, I insist on not using same brand drives as each others redundancy. So usually it's now RAID 1 of a WD Red and a ST Ironwolf. Unfortunately as of early 2022, ST's website makes it near impossible to compare across their artificial market segmentation, in fact they make it hard to find hard drives at all, with their marketdroids focusing on all other products; I only visit to get the redundancy.

[@p-thor]

Was that RedShirtJeff with the gimbal?

[@dmacpher]

I have many problems! Welcome to the club

[@JeffGeerling]

My wife interjected when she heard that during the edit "which one are you talking about in *this* video?"

[@dmacpher]

@@JeffGeerling The RoundToIt and HoneyDo list up next from Jeff G !

[@PorkChop_0]

Thanks!

[@soulrobotics]

Hi Jeff, Many old school electronics guys may give to you a ESD mat, ESD wrist strap... and a good bench power supply. Performing a test with everything hanging in the breeze is never a good idea... I do want from you a taking apart of the Asustor to see the construction. The other thing is the PCIe speeds in both motherboards, because you can use a 10Gb/s board, but the bottleneck would be the motherboard. Nice and clear statement from you is: ONLY IF YOU WANT TO BUILD ONE BY YOUR SELF DO THIS. I stick with a professional NAS for my clients, jeje.

[@charlesjmouse]

Interesting home NAS. Certainly looking forward to part 2. FWVLIW I guess the choice of option comes down to use case: -A decent NAS that's pretty much ready to go? Something like this ASUSTOR would seem ideal. -You're a tinkerer who want's a good / configurable NAS? A Pi configured as such will be a good / not too expensive option. -More? A SSF PC or something like an HP Microserver with a multiport NIC card plus something like ESXi and you're good for anything you want. -Oh, ok. eBay can bring up some awesome deals on surplus professional grade servers but buyer beware and for home use they can be very noisy. ESXi..? For anyone looking to more with their home network than connect to the internet and have a centralised place to store files I can't begin to say how valuable you will find it to run some virtualisation software on your 'server'. Yes it's another set up step and yes it's something else to learn but it only gets complicated when you really start to dig in to it. With a 'server' that has a few CPU cores (I'd suggest 8 hyperthreads +) and a multiport gigabit NIC running a bare-metal 'hypervisor' like ESXi (there are others) you will have a box that can flexibly do anything you want. Want to try something? Set up a Virtual Machine, install on to that and have a play. Don't like or mess it up? No matter everything else is fine. Delete the VM or have another go. Want to keep your resources as separate machines but don't want loads of boxes? Set up multiple VM's each dedicated to a separate purpose and let the virtualisation software take care of allocating resources. Not happy with your router? Make a VM for that and try out one of the various software routers available to leverage more options and speed. Add a PiHole VM if you like. Have a media server, network server, Web server, Torrent server. How about access to a Virtual DOS / Win98 / Win XP / Mac / Amiga / Games Console box accessible over your network? All doable from within a Virtual machine running on your server. Why not add a decent GFX card dedicated to one of the VM's and enable the use of high-end PC games across your network - if you have a 'smart' telly chances are you'll be able to access everything on the server from your couch. I tend to ramble...

[@KameraShy]

I have had very good luck with WD drives, Blues, Reds and many more before the days of the colors. They have failed simply from old age and a lot of use. Or get put out to pasture as I upgraded for more space. The worst case, a Blue, failed after about 3 years. Was a surprise. Others have lasted decades. I have one now, a 2GB (not a typo), that runs all day long. It was manufactured in 1998. Scans continue to come back clean. Still, life expectancy is a crap shoot, so good backups are always necessary. Looking forward to Part 2. Very satisfying geekdom.

[@travis1240]

I'm glad the PI 4 (and compute module) can finally be a reasonably capable NAS. That said, years ago I bought a "real" NAS and never looked back.

[@gauravgarg4]

I don't want a NAS personally, but I like to watch your videos just to hear all the technology discussions/differences a single board computer like Raspberry Pi may have.

[@richfiles]

I wanted something that could do at least 8 hard drives... I had considered a Pi, but it just seemed like a lot of work to get to 8 drives. I came across a video covering the Chenbro NR12000. $150 to ship a 1u server with a motherboard with 14 drive connectors, an older gen quad core Xeon CPU, a PSU, and 12 3.5 inch drive bays, plus a single 2.5 bay. All I had to do was add drives and RAM. 8GB of RAM was $30, so I just gave it 32GB, cause why not, and I ended up filling all 12 drive slots with HGST 4TB Coolspin drives. Excluding the drives, minimum cost to operation would be $180 + drive cost, for up to 12 drives. You can also get a PCIe riser for it, to do one integrated PCIe card, but the motherboard is an ATX formfactor, so it actually has several slots. You could theoretically feed PCIe riser cables out the rear slot opening, and set up a PCIe chassis externally for multiple PCIe cards.

[@spencergulliver5604]

Jeff, you do more tinkering on computers than Jamaica's got mangos... Never stop searching for that perfect setup!

[@tss20148]

You need a 4 bay eSATA enclosure to simplify the Pi setup.

[@LCTRgames]

5:55 is the part you're all looking for. NASs are nice, but cmon, new peeling plastic is where it's at.

[@NewAgeDIY]

I the show today Jeff. Lots of great easy to understand details that puts your show over the top. That said I have a request. For users on a budget, can you put together a show the uses a 2TB hard drive and and a basic Raspberry Pi 4 B. Run the Drive off of the Pi’s USB 3 port and a SATA cable. Also connect to your network using the pi’s build in Ethernet port. The idea behind this poor mans NAS is security. The user can place the NAS is a secured spot away from his main computer. Locked up in a office supply closet is one example. It’s job will not be used to retrieve large files but to store accounting data for a small home business. But the software should allow 3 or 4 office workers to pull up according data when required. I’m sure there’s lots of viewers out there that needs this type of NAS.

[@robcover3139]

Superb video Jeff. Lots of information, balanced approach.

[@sambaoleck295]

Awesome review, I found another NAS case (The SilverStone) in your video, because I'm all about PC NAS because we can get the most power with old generations parts.

[@keithmiller9665]

Hi Jeff from the UK. Excellent video. I had a QNAP NAS similar to the ASUSTOR in your video but switched to an OMV Raspberry Pi4 setup with 4xSSDs connected by 4xUSB3 cables and a USB3 hub connected to the Pi. I use a SSDs metal enclosure similar to the HDDs metal enclosure in your video, but obviously much smaller. My needs are more modest than yours I think both in terms of storage capacity and speed. Ultimately I didn’t like the QNAP software and the QNAP with fan being on 24x365. It seemed an unnecessary electricity cost overhead. For your future videos I will be interested in electricity cost comparison and how good the ASUSTOR software is. Keep up the good work !

[@JeffGeerling]

Next video will cover specifically those issues; stay tuned!

[@keithmiller9665]

Will do Jeff, thanks :-)

[@marinepeye8118]

Please keep on doing what you are doing! I am amzed by the knowledge, energy and time you put into this. One question: Is there a NAS (or so) which can use NVME drives, and I don't mean for cache? Too many options and confusing datasheets. Thanks for the very entertaining videos!

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

We support storage and caching on our Lockerstor 4. We believe in choice.

[@marinepeye8118]

@@ASUSTOR_YT Bots are useless and driving sales down.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

@@marinepeye8118 We don't have bots on our NAS. What?

[@vmoutsop]

I really don't need a store bought NAS, I already have one. I'm looking for a DIY solution, that's why I was asking about the feasibility of Raspberry Pi as a host for a NAS solution, plus cost is a huge factor, labor is free(me) and the learning potential - priceless.

[@JeffGeerling]

You and I are in the same boat :) Even if I end up sticking with store-bought, I already understand it a hundred times better (it's running a custom Linux distro and using mdadm and other standard utilities under the hood, it seems) since re-building the thing on a Pi.

[@bestbattle]

I have the exact 6 in 1 Stanley screwdriver (you can use it as a 8 and 10 mm - if I recall well - nut driver)

[@JeffGeerling]

Yes, I LOVE this driver; bought four of them so I have one at workbench, one at office desk, one at upstairs desk, and one in the kitchen drawer. No other multi-bit driver comes close, though the newer version they made doesn't seem to be as easy to quick-change as my older ones :(

[@bestbattle]

@@JeffGeerling be careful with them and don't use them outside. Unfortunately, they're not very resilient to rusting.

[@karlfoley]

I use an Orico 5 bay enclosure, 5 Seagate drives and a 1TB USB SSD with a RPI4. The Orifco passes the 5 drives to the RPI4 as individual disks which I built into a RAID5 array. The Orico enclosure is on one USB3 port and the SSD on the second USB3 port. I then use bcache to cache the 5 drive RAID5 via the SSD. Works for me fine over the PI 1GB network connection.

[@Apoque]

you actually don't need an adapter to plug a PCI-E x4 into an x1 slot if you're willing to cut out one end of the x1 slot. I honestly think it's really stupid that they don't all come with one side open.

[@auto117666]

There are times I think Jeff is the Mr Rogers of tech reviews.

[@laukimman]

If the testing result by Jeff for PI NAS is good , then I can see that the low end Intel CPU market on NAS will going down a lot. Jeff , you are great and I like to watch your channel .

[@AdHdEntertainmentLLC]

I have recently come across your channel. I am currently working on a pi NAS project via the ARGON 4 M.2 case. That Asustor looks kool for a small home/small business NAS

[@vladoportos]

Asustor is definitely good choice if you want just NAS, and maintenance free... but for 500Eur+ I personally go for Unraid and PC with some SAS card with flashed FW to accept SATA disks. Mine is going strong now 2+ year and I get huge amount of functionality like Docker Images and ability to run VMs etc...

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

We have support for Docker and VMs as well.

[@SidebandSamurai]

Thumbs up for "Warp Speed Jeff"!

[@molewall]

You should always put stickers on hard disks with the numbers corresponding to the slot they go into.

[@leexgx]

One note for the caching ssd, only use read only caching if using nvme SSDs as there is a risk of total data loss (even when it's using RAID1 for write caching) the nvme SSDs are known for hard locking up in a way that can crash the nas (nvme spec doesn't seem to have same hotplug/surprise remove function that SATA protocol has, unless you use SAS nvme) and resulting crash can lose metadata that can trash the filesystem

[@AJB2K3]

I leave it on as its a free screen protector for when I do end up scratching the screen!

[@wesleymays1931]

I leave it on until the machine is in its final position, to keep the screen clean while I'm moving it around

[@gametaunt]

i'm my experience from having had all 3 different setups for several years; 1. a pi-nas, a2. prebuilt nas and 3. a custom built nas machine. I can say that i prefer a custom build one always. to make it as energy efficient as a pi however requires quite a investment both money and time. a prebuilt nas (unless its enterprise grade) really isn't all that energy or money efficient if you look at the performance, its mostly just ease of use.

[@hectororestes2752]

ive been trying to do a nas for a while now, I already have a bunch of hardware to DIY. I just dont start because I keep pondering if I need just a NAS or consolidate into a full homelab server to also do other tasks (hosting, surveillance, plex, and rendering). Your channel keeps making me wonder with so many options availible!

[@DigisDen]

Not wanting to undermine anything on this video, I'm a fan of building your own too but when a commercial offering is suggested, I have to mention for you guys to take a look at ANY of the HP Microserver series. They work as an amazing 4 bay NAS, IMHO the Gen 8 was the best in terms of upgradability. I currently have a Gen10 with 32GB RAM, LSI card AND 10Gb purely for SSDs. One of these should demolish the Asus offering.

[@CardCount]

When you plugged in the rpi, you looked like you were expecting it to blow up 😂

[@johnm9263]

i ended up getting a fully configured used one of those on ebay for very cheap, and the drives were either never configured (there were 2 M.2 drives) or were lightly used or still in good shape (according to the SMART health reporting) it was covered in what looked to be some sort of caked on dust with cigarette dust mixed in, which i cleaned out, but it was an amazing price compared to what i would have had to pay for a new one

[@ArsenGaming]

I have a 2012 Mac mini, replaced the 500GB HDD with a 1TB SSD and just used the internal drive for storage, it works great

[@JeffGeerling]

Yeah, upgraded internal drive to a 2TB SSD and it's my Time Machine backup target. Works amazing for that!

[@bobv5806]

Haha! I started watching with the thought that I was in the first group, but stayed because I'm really in Group 3. :)

[@christopherrasmussen8718]

Shhh, my NAS will hear you. I don’t want to upset it 😂

[@JeffGeerling]

It's probably better than my 2011 mini!

[@christopherrasmussen8718]

@@JeffGeerling Buffalo, did the FreeNas thing for years

[@KameraShy]

My NAS is so dumb it can't hear me even when I yell at it.

[@mcdermg]

Another interesting and informative video Jeff

[@Jossandoval]

That ASUSTOR look really nice, but it didn't gave the impulse of screaming "IT LIVES!" when the fan started spinning.

[@paulmaydaynight9925]

that's a good thing for all set & forget devices unless your into modding ...make & add that device to take the old phone doing nothing over a usb caddy and attached phone case to hold it and use its screen and cpu to add expanded apps run off that 'nas' in this case...^_~

[@JeffGeerling]

It does, however, make a nice loud 'BEEP' by default if you turn it on or shut it down. Or if a drive needs replacing.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

We try not to instill fear into the hearts of our customers.

[@Jossandoval]

@@ASUSTOR_YT Yeah, I have been told that small electrics shocks are not a feature of a properly designed device. Wierd.

[@EmmEff3168]

Thank you for reminding me why I don't want an RPi setup for my NAS just yet - way too cluttered and ad-hoc. Not to mention that actually BUYING a bare RPi 4B or CM4 is Impossible at this time. Good that the ASUSTOR NAS uses regular (non-registered) HDDs unlike some other NASes. A little pricey for my home use but looks good for an SMB. Looking forwared to when the 'next' CMx comes out with better PCIe and Ethernet support and is also In Stock somewhere ....

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Well.... I might....maybe be releasing new sub-$200 US budget models soon with better Ethernet.... _*wink wink_

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

Damn, perfect timing. I was wondering about this just yesterday. 😁 Be careful about CVEs though. Also... 32TB? You lucky bastard. 🤣

[@loginregional]

Were you asleep? He has *64TB* in total. 4x8 in the asus cube, and another 4 in the Pi. But he is a lucky bastard nonetheless. I recall when I set up my little cybercafe in south america, I was so proud of having 32GB of total storage. Wow. But that was 1998 and a 64K dedicated connection ran me about 600 bucks a month.

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

@@loginregional 6:50 Seagate sent me their Ironwolf NAS 8TB drives, and they sent me four of them. 8x4 = 32 TB of free storage from seagate (excluding the two free 2TB ironwolf SSD he got in part 2, and the fact that one of the mechanical hard drives was faulty). Im assuming Jeff just reused the same drives, since he left the western digital greens on the desk, and you always see a three drives setup in part 2.

[@loginregional]

@@bufordmaddogtannen Yeah, the three drive setup in part 2 was due to the DOA drive. But I thought I saw both up and configured which would make it 8x8TB... I'll take another look. BTW I am really enjoying Jeff's stuff.

[@bufordmaddogtannen]

@@loginregional no, that was the magic of editing. Also there was no reason for seagate to send 8 drives for a 4 bay NAS (as if I understand correctly Asustor and seagate worked in tandem to make the video possible).

[@loginregional]

@@bufordmaddogtannen Like I said, I'm going to take another peek at the footage. I'm pretty sure I saw the cage populated and the lights active on the NAS, giving 8 of the 8TBs. The Woofies are apart from that of course.

[@TheDarthChilli]

Why does Steve Buschemi keep referring to himself as Jeff? :D

[@y2ksw1]

I build my stuff based upon the hardware I get right out of the box. Thus for a raspberry pi, I would use USB drives and software raid 1.

[@gaslitgames]

Watching you assemble that pi configuration was like watching someone diffusing a bomb in reverse

[@матвейлапушинский]

I'm not here for NAS, I'm here for experience )) great video

[@sinrock85]

Great videos brother! You make things look easy as pi ;)

[@miguelalt1]

Jeff, could you do a review of the asustor? It would be cool

[@JeffGeerling]

Next week... at least a review in comparison to the Pi. I don't need a lot of the special features of the Asustor, so I don't think I'd be the best person to do a full review of the thing.

[@marcuslauber7181]

Great vid! What program are you using to benchmark your network speeds?

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

He uses iPerf3

[@mrlinx]

Jeff, at the end of the day we buy those NAS systems based on their OS and their ability to keep our disks healthy long-term. Can you do a comparison at the software level, and compare all they do to ensure reliability? e.g. I was always told that self-healing filesystems (so, e.g. ZFS) absolutely require ECC memory ... is the Pi doing hardware RAID? ... how does the Pi handle disk suspension/hibernation/regular spinning up+down?

[@JeffGeerling]

Coming up next week!

[@mrlinx]

@@JeffGeerling Thanks!

[@Ironapple09]

On the 2011 Mac mini, you can get usb 3.0 with a thunderbolt dock. It has thunderbolt 1 witch is 10 gigabits per second.

[@JeffGeerling]

True, but I can't find one under $100 (every now and then a used one pops on eBay for $70-80), and it's still just delaying the inevitable. If I was going to stick with the mini, I would definitely go this route!

[@whothefoxcares]

1 PCIe lane is not a bug, it's a feature. *Sneakernet is the Future.*

[@AndreasKjerulf]

6:18 and that’s exactly why I never take the protection plastic off.

[@MrLapomme972]

The "kill a watt" name get me all the times lol. Verry nice video. Witch cam stabilizer do you use ?

[@paulmaydaynight9925]

ffmpeg -i $input -vf vidstabdetect=shakiness=10:accuracy=15

[@MrLapomme972]

@@paulmaydaynight9925 😯

[@franktippin9150]

I assume the Asustor can use Truenas, but I noticed that ZFS is available for pi.

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

We don't support TrueNAS...yet. But we're not stopping you either.

[@garylifosjoe]

I worked on the IBM severs with 8 hard drives and a year later they switched to CD drives.

[@dimitris470]

Depending on the PSUs, the cards and the cables themselves, you might have issues with floating grounds and/or loops. It would be safer to power the rpi from the big PSU as well, so that they have the same references. That said, a custom pc is going to be cheaper, more powerful and more versatile solution

[@lyokofans]

Well this confirmed what I expected. No point in building a custom small scale storage array.

[@richardajoy79]

I've been looking at a NAS and like the look of the Asustor...one thing I'd prob do is replace the fan with one of better quality, more RPM and much quieter, maybe some RGB for rear illumination (why not).

[@trowawayacc]

What about continious operation? What is the durability of a pi vs a NAS? Also can i safely turn off a nas? What is the wartage of each of this rihgae

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

Ours can be safely turned off easily and you can schedule it to turn off at specific times.

[@PlanetNr4]

Thanks a lot, I'm very curious to see what kind of problems you ran into. Also curious about the power consumption of both devices. I've tried a few home NAS solutions. I'm currently trying a Terramaster NAS.

[@JeffGeerling]

Next week I'll talk power consumption!

[@PlanetNr4]

@@JeffGeerling great 😁

[@fvheel]

My 2 Samsung 970 Evo Plus ssd's died within 2 years with only read cache in my Qnap. You shout number the drives in case something goes wrong with the drives.

[@ClannerJake]

we all know "Sponsoring something is the act of supporting an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services." i know the preface is "dollars" but those are functionally fungible when you got a 'gift' of 300-600$ NAS and 400+$ in drives to go into it. "Sponsoring something is the act of supporting an event, activity, person, or organization financially or through the provision of products or services. The individual or group that provides the support, similar to a benefactor, is known as the sponsor. "

[@RomanDvoryadkin]

3.5" HDDs uses 5V rail only for electronics. All mechanics uses 12V rail. So even with beefy 5V PSU, HDDs didn't spin without 12V PSU connected.

[@skyline8121]

Hi Jeff, can we do some project of a portable Nas ( using WiFi and battery pack) using a raspberry pi or portable plex/jellyfish server to use it in long travels with my kids and family?

[@FinlayDaG33k]

I wonder what would have happened if you used a hardware RAID card.

[@wesleymays1931]

Seems like a great idea for your NAS to double as a media player. It already has *all* your movies *right there* and has a pretty decent CPU so what's stopping them from adding a media player to its firmware? Also, why did they put one M.2 slot on each side of that cache riser? Why not show both drives on the same side, so: 1). You don't need to remove the riser to access the card on the back 2). You see both slots immediately, so if you added, say, a sexy glass side panel, you could show off your drives more easily

[@ASUSTOR_YT]

The reasoning for them being on opposite sides is because there isn't enough space in our two bay models.

[@wesleymays1931]

@@ASUSTOR_YT Makes sense

[@FennecTECH]

A company that has the boldness to give away free product to a review channel without putting any stipulations other than Tell us (AND EVERYONE ELSE) what you think” is a company that truely believes they are making a good product.