Hey there! Marco here! We're back for round II! As with last time, feel free to let me know if you have comments, questions, criticism or praise and I'll happily reply to you with an answer! We do have to remind you that our NAS warranty does not cover Acts of Red Shirt Jeff! By the way, thank you Not-Red-Shirt-Jeff for helping to uncover the issues with the kernel NIC driver! This feedback will definitely be used to improve performance for FREE!
There are a lot of people who review a lot of stuff on RUclips. One thing I will always try to do is both learn and teach something new in any review I do. Ideally multiple things, but there are already plenty of people who can go through specs and run a few benchmarks in an entertaining way-I want to try to blend in a little more education!
One important difference: You can actually buy the NAS off the shelf. Wait times for the better Pi versions are insane unless you're willing to pay a scalper double the retail price.
Depends where you are living. Here in Germany the Pi4 is available in every shape or form for retail prices. If not, just wait a few days and there are thousands back in stock. IDK how we do it, but it works just fine.
Depends. Some NAS manufacturers also have delivery issues for the exact same reason there is a shortage of RPi. There are also a shortage of some monitors, laptops, HDD, ... Covid has created quite universal shortages.
The real benefit to the RPi NAS is the flexibility. It has a full Linux distro (it's a complete computer!) and you can do anything you want with it. For example, you can add avahi/zeroconf stuff, NodeRED for home automation, an mqtt server, use it as your HTPC, run arbitrary scheduled/cron jobs (written in your language of choice), control RGB LED lighting, add an IR sensor to use it with any old IR remote, etc. It's a vastly more capable platform because it's *generic* and not made to do just one thing like that commercial NAS.
3 года назад+19
This is a silly thing. Why would you do that on a storage device? Yes you can, but it is like you can also put tractor tires on a lamborghini, huge cannon and pair of helicopter rotors. There is hardly any real need for that on a storage device.
Also apart from keeping a storage device as exclusive storage device, there really is not enough compute power in a RP to both run NAS service as well as virtualize VMs etc at the same time. Pay 30e to 40e more and buy a atom based ITX x86 board. the 3.5 inch drives most people use are so large it makes no difference if the motherboard is pi sized or itx sized. And when you also have to spend money on Sata adapters etc for the RP the x86 board ends up being very comparable in price. (Also please do and actual electricity measurement of both solutions and you will see the actual difference in yearly total power costs are minute between the two different solutions)
@ No it's not, it makes perfectly sense. Why use, maintain and pay (for hw and for electricity) several devices when you can do everything on a single one? If you only need a nas it makes sense to buy a product like the Asustor one, but with a generic ARM board you can make a pretty decent nas AND a pretty decent home server for running a lot of other applications. On my arm board I run Pi-hole, I run my website and several other project and services (like privatebin, nagios, collectd, my family password manager), I use it as a VPN server for securely connect to other networks (like my company network for smart working, several vps and several AWS vpcs) and I use it as a nas for backups and share files for my media server. Ok it's possible to do some of those things using containers or some applications available through the Asustor management interface, but there's no comparison in terms of flexibility. On a simple arm board you can do almost everything, and there's no reason to recompile kernels (ok Jeff recompile so many times, but because he's dealing with hw) or do fancy things.
This is true, and a good reason why I often choose a Pi for a task-though I try to keep things separate, either by containerizing everything so I could split it off to other hardware easily, or by running more heavyweight or critical apps on separate physical hardware (so multiple Pis for multiple purposes). With automation it's actually easier and more resilient to do that rather than sticking all eggs in one basket, though the costs go up a little :)
The taco seems to be pretty good when you think of it as a first revision, if raspberry pi gets a bit more powerful in the future it'll look like a solid competitor
I really hope whatever CM comes next, Raspberry Pi keeps the 2x 100 pin connector layout, so devices like the Taco can immediately get a speed boost just by upgrading the Pi.
@@JeffGeerling Not probably. Next CM would have more pci express links and maybe different ways to use ethernet and usb phys to simplify motherboards in future.
@@ilfirinms They could take Radxa's approach though, and maintain x1 lane compatibility on the existing pins, and add another link through another connector.
@@JeffGeerling Cost and traces (have one pcie link on one connector, others on another...) ineffective. Simplier would be ground up redesign, but ye, Radxas approach is plausible.
It'll be interesting to see whether appliance vendors like ASUSTOR will ever make products that embed a compute module. It'll be a bit more expensive to manufacture and most of their buyers won't see the benefit, so not likely, but maybe a niche side product that some vendors will offer for a premium, similar to how some router vendors offered versions that supported 3rd party firmware. That required that they use older, more expensive hardware designs as they had switched to cost-reduced hardware in their current models (typically with less RAM, Flash, and slower CPUs).
the problem with tako is an absence of good enclosure, so instead mini-itx + amd ryzen apu is much better choice with it good 17w idle power consumption, and when needed boost of power.
@@s.i.m.c.a I like the platform you described, but it is really hard to find in stock, sadly. We were supposed to have so much great tech at low cost, and now even low cost is expensive and sparse...
I think you should have mentioned that well, you can actually buy the Drivestor 4 Pro right now. The CM4 it's still nowhere to be found: the fact that is so versatile and can be used across so many different projects also means that even a little bit of supply constrain and well they're just gone and will be gone for over a full year. I mean no disrespect by saying this but I do get a bit burned out from channels that talk about the CM4 almost exclusively when absolutely nobody can buy them, wouldn't hurt to diversify the channel a little bit and at least try other boards even if your arguments for sticking to the CM4 are valid, availability means nobody can actually put any of this to the test since nobody can get a CM4.
The crazy thing is there are a number of vendors who sell the CM4 as part of a solution-and for many of them, they do have stock. It's just impossible to find CM4s on their own right now :(
@@JeffGeerling I see those sparingly but it's still 100x easier to find regular Raspberry Pi 4 on those kinds of vendor bundles, even though the CM4 seems to me like a more versatile and useful device given the pci-e lane on it
@@loswilko Typically, yes-and that's how industrial vendors are able to supply CM4s integrated with their devices. If you're able to order in batches of 100+, you may be able to get some Pis. Honestly I considered trying to buy a few large batches to resell at list price just to help people out-but the logistics would be far too much for a single RUclipsr with no staff to arrange it (and I'd basically be donating the shipping/handling costs, which is another large drain on resources...).
Also from my side said with all respect. But the availability issue mentioned is extremely important. And as I already mentioned before there is very good itx based x86 boards at good prices and good availability, even ones where you can use ECC memory
I've been considering a home NAS for video content creation purposes, and have been watching NAS-related videos for weeks now. I can honestly say I've learned more from your three Pi vs. ASUSTOR videos than any other creator on RUclips. Only you have made me feel well informed enough to make my decision - a COTS NAS. But if anything I'll go with a Lockerstor, not a Drivestor. I want those NVME expansion options and dual Ethernet.
Thanks - I'm always impressed by what a Pi can do, and running a NAS on my Pi4 with just USB 3.0 drives was actually pretty impressive. Unlike an off the shelf NAS that Pi 4 can now be used for any number of other learning projects and the Pi4 experience inspired me to repurpose an old "gaming PC' to be an unRAID server. My point is that any time anyone does a comparison with an off the shelf NAS box it would be great to see the numbers for some typical old PC hardware doing the same job - ANYTHING that gives people pause for thought before they get rid of their old gear and hopefully inspires them to repurpose it rather than sending it to e-waste. Never going to be popular with companies that want to sell their new shiny toys of course, but that's the point isn't it? I mean to make a fair comparison with what can be done with hardware that costs nothing because you already own it !
The distance between SATA ports is almost 2mm too short for regular 3.5" HDDs to fit... they could have fit if they moved it towards the borders. However thinner HDDs (20.2mm thick) should fit perfectly, with 4mm to spare. Maybe with a custom 3D printed case for them.
There's one forum user who posted that he had built a version for ARM64, but I haven't seen anything beyond that post yet. Would love to see it even unofficially available, as more ARM64 devices are coming to the market-some with 16+ GB of RAM, too.
@@JeffGeerling ram is really am issue if you use anything as complicated as ZFS. I recently used a J3455 with 16gb of ram for a nas but really had to think about what I was doing to get good performance.
I like Jeffs balanced Way of Describe things. 4 years ago I assembled a Raspi 4 B 8G with OMV 5.5 Usul for a NAS. Instructions on Google are easy to find. As an active USB HUB I got the TP-Link USB 3.0 HUB as a 7-port version. At that time 37.90 I connected 4 Toshiba Canvio Basic with 4TB as hard drives. At that time 85.50 All in all this results in an ARMv7 based, 8 GB powerful (depending on the Pi) WIFI capable, Gigabit capable, fully modular (if I don't need it as NAS anymore, go for it) 16TB large!!! (and thanks to the 7 port USB 3.0 hub, that's not the end) still expandable, Linux based NAS for under 500.- incl. storage space.
With the RPi you also get upgradeability as well, when say a compute module 5 comes out, just remove the CM4 and plug in the CM5. (I make the massive assumption that RPi Foundation keeps the CM's form factor).
Sounds like the pi could use even more tweaks when running in this kind of configuration? Could be wrong but seems that hdd spin up could be a useful change imo
There is also a question of software features and updates.... Case for keeping the drives cooling it sufficiently... This is good for poc but actual usage ends up with same amount of money + the extra time needed to manage it...
Haha, I actually had to run a hum filter on it and reduce the low end a bit because some of the vibration was making my speakers shake during the edit :D
This video strengthen my think that retail product's price is for it's producers' effort and time. Theoretically, almost everything in our life is DIYable, but if there's a market, that means people wants to enjoy comfort being a customer.... Yes, some linux guys die hard for os flexibility, but many of them compromises with their room and house metrics, which is 'rebuildable' with logs, nails and mortars...
Learning pays the most in the long run. I like the taco as it can have a smaller cases/shelf space. How and what make's a good power supply for external usb hdd and/or NAS like these ?
on both my pi's i use the old OMV plug and play images that only needed ethernet cable to auto install OMV on a pi after burning it with etcher, to bad its no longer supported.. wish there was more nas software on pi in general.. those commercial nas ui's are really pretty
Saving some e-waste! That range of laptops is still fast enough to handle tasks like storage and transcoding quite well, without using too much energy to do it.
@@HeadBoffin I upgraded the ram, but had to go back to 8gb after realising the ram slot was faulty, and put in a 2tb SSD. I may take out the DVD burner, for another SSD, but for now, I can rip CDs over the network.
Very interesting adventure :3 I was very interested in the performance of a ARM NAS. I wonder how SMB performance would be if the hdd's were connected over a usb3 connection. I recently bought a Mikrotik RB5009 which has 10G,2.5G,1G networking and usb3 and Marvell ARMADA 7040 (88F7040) Quad-Core CA72 Processor. Its way overkill for my networking need as my ISPs max out at barely 50mbps. I was wondering if I can put a hdd with usb3 adapter there and use it as a mini-nas. Currently I'm waiting on mikrotik to put docker support in routeros stable channel. On another note, can I ask why you choose bcache? I was searching linux SSD caching the other day, and it seems like LVM's cache thingy was the easiest the setup and the most performant.
I built such system using fanless usb3 orico HD dock (about $30 on Amazon). My older fanless i5 (dual core, Ram DDR3, 8GB) works as controller (no gui, only console and ssh for remote PC terminal). With two green Seagate 18TB drives formatted in ZFS RAID1, both installed in the same orico (therefore single USB3 connection), I've achieved consistent 80MB/s write through network. Because my network is 1Gbps then I am considering my setup fine. System working without any issues. No Bcache used either. Fanless operation is priceless (in my home, I am using RAID as storage, therefore most of the time drives do not spin at all)
I have a rb5009 too, i tested it with a usb stick, copy a large file to my local pc over a gig port, transfer speed was over 100MBytes, and still have a lot room before max cpu usage. also the smb feature is built in routeros. drawback is filesystem, only fat32, ext3 supported.
@@czarekcz1097 110MB/s is about what to exoect copying files over a 1gbit/s network. That is also what I manage when copying over gbps network to USB3-connected disks on a full PC.
@@perwestermark8920 You are right. If PC and my i5 are connected with short cables to small unmanaged switch at my table then I am close to theoretical limit of 110-115MB (no jumbo packets). In reality my PC is connected to switch at attic and server is located at basement (cable length about 25 yards each). Therefore this number is satisfactory for me.
@@czarekcz1097 Cable length doesn't matter, as long as it's within allowed max length for cable standard at selected bit rate. If you get packet loss then you may have a cabling issue (or a bad NIC or switch port)
If you want your Pi NAS to do staggered spin up of the hard drives you can tape over pin 11 of the SATA power connector. Without the pin grounded SSU is enabled. If your drives support it you might also have a jumper to force enable SSU but where's the fun in that?
Fantastic review!. I have been working on a network diagram to minimize what I need to leave powered up 24x7 and it really comes down to just a media-center/NAS with HDMI. The Taco fits the bill but would still have to come up with a actual case for it. If only the Drivestor would have left the HDMI connector on it would be the winner for me.
Intel this year upgraded their lower end processors called Jasper Lake and the N6000 is 4core, they use the same power as the Pi. It will be interesting to see in the future some basic NAS with this CPU. Being x86 have the advantage because you can install TrueNAS.
That's a good question-I *think* it would, at least in four of the five slots, on the board I have. I think Radxa might even have a slight tweak to the board for the final version that would allow five to be mounted. We'll have to wait and see!
How would performance be affected if the Taco had a RAID controller chip onboard? Since PCIe speed is directly affecting the soft RAID functions I’m thinking a RAID chip would speed things up considerably because the SoC has no role in it and all the writes occur after the PCIe bus.
I have one of these and after trying to use it I somehow copied a file onto the Lenix boot USB and I can’t get it removed so I cannot do anything with the HDMI on system. So I would probably use your pie one because it seems my has flaws what I can’t actually fix
Jeff, I’m building an extension to my house, and you’ll learn a bungle of new stuff, the job starts at 06:00hrs and finishes at 18:00hrs, and by the way don’t forget to bring your lunch, BTW i love guys that don’t but a monetary value on their time.
Hi Mr. Geerling. I loved the video! It's a real shame that raspberry pis have been getting so hard to find for a decent price recently... I've been wanting to build a home NAS for a long time, but I only have a Pi4 with me, not a compute module. Any chance you would make a quick roundup of cool hats and expansions for the good ol' regular pi form factor?
Any update on how to get a Radxa Taco? Is it still in pre-release or is it so backlogged for parts that they’re not even accepting orders, the wiki doesn’t mention release timeframe or ways to purchase.
For a lot of people there isn't even a need to go as far as buying a Taco. My current NAS setup is a pi 4b with 2 2tb hard drives attached to it via the usb 3 ports. Yes its not the best, but setup for this was pretty simple, and super cheap. For me I primarily use this as a backup storage solution, and as a way to transfer files between my PC, laptop, phone and a way to access it outside. I get about 60-80 mb read and write, and again, while not the best, its more than enough for my basic needs. I think the whole thing cost me about $200.
What the heck were those HDDs doing during that spin-up phase... Sounds so scary! Were they damaged? Thanks for the great learning value, as usual, Jeff! :)
I get why its easier to design a nice pluggable 2.5" drive build. Clean and straightforward. But the price/TB ratios make them useless unless you are going for FAST storage.
@@JeffGeerling NAS noise is ok since you can tuck it away as far as you can pull some ethernet. I'd LOVE a solution that had the ports spaced for 3.5" and the PSU prepared for the draw. Then I would have a complete clean build with 1 board, 1 printed case, 1 psu and 1 unobtanium RPI CM4
I connected a DAS to a raspberry pi 4 and now I get the best of both worlds: the pi cpu mostly free to run other stuff and a fast, network-accessible, redundant storage.
We've gone from the age of paid advertising content to the dawn of free testing on monetized RUclips content. Ain't the internet grand? I thought a lot about building my own NAS based upon the Pi as well as building my own NAS using off-the-shelf PC/server components and after many hours of research, decided to go with a dedicated NAS box instead. Now don't get me wrong, I know Linux and am comfortable with it from running a tiny Pi NAS (DietPi FTW!) for several years and I still run a Pi-powered amateur radio hotspot. But after many more hours of research comparing the various NAS devices out there (ASUStor QNAP, Synology, Terramaster, etc.) I went with the ASUStor Lockerstor4 for being the lowest-cost option that would allow me to have dual 1TB nvme drives in a RAID1 config for the OS/stuff as well as dual 8TB drives in a RAID1 and then two separate MyArchive volumes - one to backup the 8TB RAID1 storage volume to on a nightly basis, and another for just playing around with. Of course I also upgraded the total RAM in it to 32GB instead of the meager amount it came with - and yes, while not officially stated by ASUS, 32GB of DDR4 RAM does work in it because it's supported by the CPU. I also bonded the two 2.5GbE ports on my Unifi switch so while I'm not getting the full 5Gbps I still do get at least 2Gbps through it while also providing for interface failover in case of a port or interface failure on either end. It also lives on the same dedicated UPS for my networking equipment which provides almost 2 hours of power for the entire stack and it's configured to shut itself down when the power is out and only 30 minutes of run time are remaining on the UPS. Even with two switches, an AP, firewall, and the Lockerstor4 the UPS is only at 7% load at any given time. I use it for Plex, as well as for running a Unifi Controller and Home Assistant in separate VirtualBox machines (they run better that way than in Docker), as well as running many Docker containers to handle web-based services such as Whoogle, Mealie, Deluge, Uptime-Kuma, Wallabag, NextCloud, Photoprism, MeTube, Kiwix, Calibre Web, Adguard Home, Portainer, Stringer RSS, OSINT portal, ZeroTier controller, and Flame and Homer link dashboards. And all of it backed up every 24 hours to a separate 8TB drive in the Lockerstor4 and backed up to secure cloud storage every week. And with ZeroTier I can now access everything on it securely from anywhere on the planet using any of my mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops) without opening any holes in my firewall and having to put it all behind Cloudflare or configuring any VPN client access. It just works. It's how I watch Plex videos from the road. Of course I'm not the normal user.
What software with TACO IS best for setting up cloud storage / remote login storage? (Less programming additions also?. I may setup (1pi4 and 1-8tb 3.5 internal drive)…. 3 units. But I need to know if power from PI4 can run that hdd? What cable do I need? Software? I used to use Odroid (No longer avail).
Hey Jeff! I have at home a 6 drive RAID 5 array running on my CM4. I too had similar speeds via Samba. My solution to increase the speeds was to overclock the Pi to 2GHz. That increased the speeds to 100MB/s, almost saturating my 1Gbps connection. Maybe try an overclock with your Pi and see if that brings any improvement to the table as it did for me. I did end up putting a cooler on it to keep it chill, because the SATA card and the Pi's CPU got pretty toasty while reading and writing data.
What about updates? On one hand you want to have regular updates, but on the other hand you don‘t want to restart the nas weekly. I had a qnap nas that needed weekly restarts due to updates. That was annoying as my vms used the nas as iscsi storage… Happy with my self build truenas box, but it has a bit a bigger power draw …
@@JeffGeerling Ah right! I'd forgotten rPi also have GPIO pins! Hm.. maybe then an actual bell right? Could even make it purple, get TacoBell to sponsor the video and raffle it off xD
Jeff - Is it possible to connect a Raspberry pi 4 with a QNAP TL-D800C. I want a Non-raid solution to connect mass storage to the Pi 4 without the noise and heavy power usage. Would this work?
Performance is one thing, but so is longevity. I know I'll be able to get security updates for my pi rig forever, even if that means changing the OS some day. The same thing cannot be said about my 8 year old WD NAS which performs just fine but I have to run it air gapped due to their lackadaisical security responses. Obviously an air gapped Nas isn't fulfilling its design goals.
I am thinking about a NAS. It would be used for Plex mostly and some limited web page access. I will look at the ASUSTOR (unknown to me) along with the Sysnegry 5 bay system. I like the Pi because of the control I can have on it. Any comments? Thanks in advance.
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
![Noob To Max With DRAGON REWORK In Blox Fruits [FULL MOVIE]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/LnBMOinoOvA/mqdefault.jpg)
Hey there! Marco here! We're back for round II! As with last time, feel free to let me know if you have comments, questions, criticism or praise and I'll happily reply to you with an answer! We do have to remind you that our NAS warranty does not cover Acts of Red Shirt Jeff!
By the way, thank you Not-Red-Shirt-Jeff for helping to uncover the issues with the kernel NIC driver! This feedback will definitely be used to improve performance for FREE!
hi nas company person
@@realcartoongirl Hello!
Hey Marco, how about a nice fat coupon to tempt us away from the taco? :D
Nice product no questions about it, but I'm rather the tinkering guy...
Just FYI ASUSTOR, I came away from this with respect for your software and hardware teams.. nice work.
Love how thorough all of these comparisons are. Even though I'm not looking for another NAS, I always learn something useful watching them.
There are a lot of people who review a lot of stuff on RUclips. One thing I will always try to do is both learn and teach something new in any review I do. Ideally multiple things, but there are already plenty of people who can go through specs and run a few benchmarks in an entertaining way-I want to try to blend in a little more education!
One important difference: You can actually buy the NAS off the shelf. Wait times for the better Pi versions are insane unless you're willing to pay a scalper double the retail price.
This is true :(
Tfw mining
Depends where you are living. Here in Germany the Pi4 is available in every shape or form for retail prices. If not, just wait a few days and there are thousands back in stock. IDK how we do it, but it works just fine.
@@xxcr4ckzzxx840 Do you happen to have a link to any stores there with CM4s in stock? I'd love to make a purchase at reasonable prices.
Depends. Some NAS manufacturers also have delivery issues for the exact same reason there is a shortage of RPi.
There are also a shortage of some monitors, laptops, HDD, ... Covid has created quite universal shortages.
12:04 "Until next time, I'm Jeff Geerling." Who will you be after next time?
This is a good question.
Next video is "Can you replace Jeff Geerling with a raspberry pi?"
The real benefit to the RPi NAS is the flexibility. It has a full Linux distro (it's a complete computer!) and you can do anything you want with it. For example, you can add avahi/zeroconf stuff, NodeRED for home automation, an mqtt server, use it as your HTPC, run arbitrary scheduled/cron jobs (written in your language of choice), control RGB LED lighting, add an IR sensor to use it with any old IR remote, etc. It's a vastly more capable platform because it's *generic* and not made to do just one thing like that commercial NAS.
This is a silly thing. Why would you do that on a storage device? Yes you can, but it is like you can also put tractor tires on a lamborghini, huge cannon and pair of helicopter rotors. There is hardly any real need for that on a storage device.
Also apart from keeping a storage device as exclusive storage device, there really is not enough compute power in a RP to both run NAS service as well as virtualize VMs etc at the same time. Pay 30e to 40e more and buy a atom based ITX x86 board. the 3.5 inch drives most people use are so large it makes no difference if the motherboard is pi sized or itx sized. And when you also have to spend money on Sata adapters etc for the RP the x86 board ends up being very comparable in price. (Also please do and actual electricity measurement of both solutions and you will see the actual difference in yearly total power costs are minute between the two different solutions)
English?
@ No it's not, it makes perfectly sense.
Why use, maintain and pay (for hw and for electricity) several devices when you can do everything on a single one?
If you only need a nas it makes sense to buy a product like the Asustor one, but with a generic ARM board you can make a pretty decent nas AND a pretty decent home server for running a lot of other applications.
On my arm board I run Pi-hole, I run my website and several other project and services (like privatebin, nagios, collectd, my family password manager), I use it as a VPN server for securely connect to other networks (like my company network for smart working, several vps and several AWS vpcs) and I use it as a nas for backups and share files for my media server.
Ok it's possible to do some of those things using containers or some applications available through the Asustor management interface, but there's no comparison in terms of flexibility.
On a simple arm board you can do almost everything, and there's no reason to recompile kernels (ok Jeff recompile so many times, but because he's dealing with hw) or do fancy things.
This is true, and a good reason why I often choose a Pi for a task-though I try to keep things separate, either by containerizing everything so I could split it off to other hardware easily, or by running more heavyweight or critical apps on separate physical hardware (so multiple Pis for multiple purposes). With automation it's actually easier and more resilient to do that rather than sticking all eggs in one basket, though the costs go up a little :)
I like how you directly addressed the paid advertising thing, the complete transparency is refreshing. 🙂
The taco seems to be pretty good when you think of it as a first revision, if raspberry pi gets a bit more powerful in the future it'll look like a solid competitor
I really hope whatever CM comes next, Raspberry Pi keeps the 2x 100 pin connector layout, so devices like the Taco can immediately get a speed boost just by upgrading the Pi.
@@JeffGeerling Not probably. Next CM would have more pci express links and maybe different ways to use ethernet and usb phys to simplify motherboards in future.
@@ilfirinms They could take Radxa's approach though, and maintain x1 lane compatibility on the existing pins, and add another link through another connector.
@@JeffGeerling Cost and traces (have one pcie link on one connector, others on another...) ineffective. Simplier would be ground up redesign, but ye, Radxas approach is plausible.
It'll be interesting to see whether appliance vendors like ASUSTOR will ever make products that embed a compute module. It'll be a bit more expensive to manufacture and most of their buyers won't see the benefit, so not likely, but maybe a niche side product that some vendors will offer for a premium, similar to how some router vendors offered versions that supported 3rd party firmware. That required that they use older, more expensive hardware designs as they had switched to cost-reduced hardware in their current models (typically with less RAM, Flash, and slower CPUs).
Thanks Jeff, and Merry Christmas to you and your family
To me it doesn't matter. The fact that I can run any software I want on a Pi compared to some proprietary NAS device is all the convincing I need.
This. On top of that, since I have been using Linux for quite some time I actually prefer doing things with CLI instead of a gui
That makes it a good choice for you and I, but woefully wrong for a lot of people like my parents.
the problem with tako is an absence of good enclosure, so instead mini-itx + amd ryzen apu is much better choice with it good 17w idle power consumption, and when needed boost of power.
@@Steamrick your parents need a NAS?
@@s.i.m.c.a I like the platform you described, but it is really hard to find in stock, sadly. We were supposed to have so much great tech at low cost, and now even low cost is expensive and sparse...
I think you should have mentioned that well, you can actually buy the Drivestor 4 Pro right now. The CM4 it's still nowhere to be found: the fact that is so versatile and can be used across so many different projects also means that even a little bit of supply constrain and well they're just gone and will be gone for over a full year.
I mean no disrespect by saying this but I do get a bit burned out from channels that talk about the CM4 almost exclusively when absolutely nobody can buy them, wouldn't hurt to diversify the channel a little bit and at least try other boards even if your arguments for sticking to the CM4 are valid, availability means nobody can actually put any of this to the test since nobody can get a CM4.
The crazy thing is there are a number of vendors who sell the CM4 as part of a solution-and for many of them, they do have stock. It's just impossible to find CM4s on their own right now :(
@@JeffGeerling I see those sparingly but it's still 100x easier to find regular Raspberry Pi 4 on those kinds of vendor bundles, even though the CM4 seems to me like a more versatile and useful device given the pci-e lane on it
@@JeffGeerling would a bulk purchase make a difference to lead times? Last time I checked my suppliers, they were all saying around middle of march.
@@loswilko Typically, yes-and that's how industrial vendors are able to supply CM4s integrated with their devices. If you're able to order in batches of 100+, you may be able to get some Pis.
Honestly I considered trying to buy a few large batches to resell at list price just to help people out-but the logistics would be far too much for a single RUclipsr with no staff to arrange it (and I'd basically be donating the shipping/handling costs, which is another large drain on resources...).
Also from my side said with all respect. But the availability issue mentioned is extremely important. And as I already mentioned before there is very good itx based x86 boards at good prices and good availability, even ones where you can use ECC memory
I've been considering a home NAS for video content creation purposes, and have been watching NAS-related videos for weeks now. I can honestly say I've learned more from your three Pi vs. ASUSTOR videos than any other creator on RUclips. Only you have made me feel well informed enough to make my decision - a COTS NAS. But if anything I'll go with a Lockerstor, not a Drivestor. I want those NVME expansion options and dual Ethernet.
Thanks for showing us your pi nas.
Loving this content man! Seems to keep getting better!
Hey Jeff, I missed this. I'm glad you got another sponsorship. 👍🏻
Belated merry Christmas.
Thank you, and the same back to you! Red Shirt Jeff will say hello next week, and then we'll welcome the new. Year with a few fun new videos!
Thanks - I'm always impressed by what a Pi can do, and running a NAS on my Pi4 with just USB 3.0 drives was actually pretty impressive. Unlike an off the shelf NAS that Pi 4 can now be used for any number of other learning projects and the Pi4 experience inspired me to repurpose an old "gaming PC' to be an unRAID server.
My point is that any time anyone does a comparison with an off the shelf NAS box it would be great to see the numbers for some typical old PC hardware doing the same job - ANYTHING that gives people pause for thought before they get rid of their old gear and hopefully inspires them to repurpose it rather than sending it to e-waste. Never going to be popular with companies that want to sell their new shiny toys of course, but that's the point isn't it? I mean to make a fair comparison with what can be done with hardware that costs nothing because you already own it !
Well done Jeff! Excellent comparative review with honest discussion concerning real world implementation for different user types.
"For us, every hour spent learning it's priceless." - GEERLING, Jeff
It's good when your favourite content creator has the same values as you. ;)
Excellent, as usual. Thanks a lot for this new one. Take care and happy Christmas!
As always, a most excellent, thorough comparison!
The distance between SATA ports is almost 2mm too short for regular 3.5" HDDs to fit... they could have fit if they moved it towards the borders. However thinner HDDs (20.2mm thick) should fit perfectly, with 4mm to spare. Maybe with a custom 3D printed case for them.
It's a bit disappointing that TrueNAS isn't built for ARM
There's one forum user who posted that he had built a version for ARM64, but I haven't seen anything beyond that post yet. Would love to see it even unofficially available, as more ARM64 devices are coming to the market-some with 16+ GB of RAM, too.
@@JeffGeerling ram is really am issue if you use anything as complicated as ZFS. I recently used a J3455 with 16gb of ram for a nas but really had to think about what I was doing to get good performance.
LOL at the last minute. The Asustor includes 54K modem sounds at startup :)
Technically those sounds are coming from the Seagate drives-the NAS just makes a lower background whir as the fan runs.
I like Jeffs balanced Way of Describe things.
4 years ago I assembled a Raspi 4 B 8G with OMV 5.5 Usul for a NAS.
Instructions on Google are easy to find.
As an active USB HUB I got the TP-Link USB 3.0 HUB as a 7-port version.
At that time 37.90
I connected 4 Toshiba Canvio Basic with 4TB as hard drives.
At that time 85.50
All in all this results in an
ARMv7 based, 8 GB powerful (depending on the Pi) WIFI capable, Gigabit capable, fully modular (if I don't need it as NAS anymore, go for it) 16TB large!!! (and thanks to the 7 port USB 3.0 hub, that's not the end) still expandable, Linux based NAS for under 500.- incl. storage space.
How did no one pick up the Iron Man "built in a cave with a box of scraps" reference?
Excellent review as usual. Keep it up!
my heart skipped a beat when you nearly dropped the NAS
So did ours!
With the RPi you also get upgradeability as well, when say a compute module 5 comes out, just remove the CM4 and plug in the CM5. (I make the massive assumption that RPi Foundation keeps the CM's form factor).
Sounds like the pi could use even more tweaks when running in this kind of configuration? Could be wrong but seems that hdd spin up could be a useful change imo
I really love your content , keep doing this great work , hopefully one day I'll be able to buy a CM4 and learn all the cool stuff that you do.
Merry Christmas Jeff!
The boot-up sounds like a jet with R2-D2 locked in the bathroom.
Thank you for sharing your knowledge. Merry Christmas and happy new year to you and your family. God bless you and your family.
There is also a question of software features and updates.... Case for keeping the drives cooling it sufficiently... This is good for poc but actual usage ends up with same amount of money + the extra time needed to manage it...
The outro sounds real good on a big fat subwoofer
Haha, I actually had to run a hum filter on it and reduce the low end a bit because some of the vibration was making my speakers shake during the edit :D
sounds like R2-D2 booting up and printing something off a dot-matrix.
12:16 😂😂😂
Cool, your NAS is talking to you
Let's be honest: we're all really here for the ASMR at the end and the two back-up solutions are just distractions.
Great video! Keep up with the good work!! Thanks for the knowledge share !!
would love to see a comparison of these vs the ODROID-HC4
This video strengthen my think that retail product's price is for it's producers' effort and time.
Theoretically, almost everything in our life is DIYable, but if there's a market, that means people wants to enjoy comfort being a customer....
Yes, some linux guys die hard for os flexibility, but many of them compromises with their room and house metrics, which is 'rebuildable' with logs, nails and mortars...
Interesting video, though that ssd used for cache cost more than either of the nas yea?
Great review!
Learning pays the most in the long run. I like the taco as it can have a smaller cases/shelf space. How and what make's a good power supply for external usb hdd and/or NAS like these ?
Off the shelf for life! I can tolerate only a couple of Pi project like Pi hole, Pi Wireless print servers and remote Rsync backup.
on both my pi's i use the old OMV plug and play images that only needed ethernet cable to auto install OMV on a pi after burning it with etcher, to bad its no longer supported..
wish there was more nas software on pi in general.. those commercial nas ui's are really pretty
The initial spin up of the drives at the end of the video, kind of sounded like a 747 engines spinning up from the cockpit
Anyone find the sound of and NAS booting and HDD spinning at the end ASMR
I use my mid 2012 MacBook Pro running Ubuntu Server as a server, it’s fantastic because it’s recycling, and good enough!
Saving some e-waste! That range of laptops is still fast enough to handle tasks like storage and transcoding quite well, without using too much energy to do it.
@@JeffGeerling 4K video while serving web, and pihole at the same time! No hitches.
@@JeffGeerling Hey Jeff! I think we found your clone!
@@JeffGeerling Ha, that range of laptops is still fast enough to, erm, be my main laptop - the last model you can upgrade / fix yourself.
@@HeadBoffin I upgraded the ram, but had to go back to 8gb after realising the ram slot was faulty, and put in a 2tb SSD. I may take out the DVD burner, for another SSD, but for now, I can rip CDs over the network.
fantastic video jeff
Very interesting adventure :3 I was very interested in the performance of a ARM NAS. I wonder how SMB performance would be if the hdd's were connected over a usb3 connection. I recently bought a Mikrotik RB5009 which has 10G,2.5G,1G networking and usb3 and Marvell
ARMADA 7040 (88F7040) Quad-Core CA72 Processor. Its way overkill for my networking need as my ISPs max out at barely 50mbps. I was wondering if I can put a hdd with usb3 adapter there and use it as a mini-nas. Currently I'm waiting on mikrotik to put docker support in routeros stable channel.
On another note, can I ask why you choose bcache? I was searching linux SSD caching the other day, and it seems like LVM's cache thingy was the easiest the setup and the most performant.
I built such system using fanless usb3 orico HD dock (about $30 on Amazon). My older fanless i5 (dual core, Ram DDR3, 8GB) works as controller (no gui, only console and ssh for remote PC terminal). With two green Seagate 18TB drives formatted in ZFS RAID1, both installed in the same orico (therefore single USB3 connection), I've achieved consistent 80MB/s write through network. Because my network is 1Gbps then I am considering my setup fine. System working without any issues. No Bcache used either. Fanless operation is priceless (in my home, I am using RAID as storage, therefore most of the time drives do not spin at all)
I have a rb5009 too, i tested it with a usb stick, copy a large file to my local pc over a gig port, transfer speed was over 100MBytes, and still have a lot room before max cpu usage. also the smb feature is built in routeros. drawback is filesystem, only fat32, ext3 supported.
@@czarekcz1097 110MB/s is about what to exoect copying files over a 1gbit/s network. That is also what I manage when copying over gbps network to USB3-connected disks on a full PC.
@@perwestermark8920 You are right. If PC and my i5 are connected with short cables to small unmanaged switch at my table then I am close to theoretical limit of 110-115MB (no jumbo packets). In reality my PC is connected to switch at attic and server is located at basement (cable length about 25 yards each). Therefore this number is satisfactory for me.
@@czarekcz1097 Cable length doesn't matter, as long as it's within allowed max length for cable standard at selected bit rate. If you get packet loss then you may have a cabling issue (or a bad NIC or switch port)
Happy Holidays to everyone and your families (yes, even to you, Red Shirt Jeff).✌❤😎
If you want your Pi NAS to do staggered spin up of the hard drives you can tape over pin 11 of the SATA power connector. Without the pin grounded SSU is enabled.
If your drives support it you might also have a jumper to force enable SSU but where's the fun in that?
Looks like you're onto something, I'm also having slower speeds when using Samba lately.
Fantastic review!. I have been working on a network diagram to minimize what I need to leave powered up 24x7 and it really comes down to just a media-center/NAS with HDMI. The Taco fits the bill but would still have to come up with a actual case for it. If only the Drivestor would have left the HDMI connector on it would be the winner for me.
OK, now the video is finished, he's Jeff Geerling again. But who is this mysterious man while he actually presents the video?
Intel this year upgraded their lower end processors called Jasper Lake and the N6000 is 4core, they use the same power as the Pi. It will be interesting to see in the future some basic NAS with this CPU. Being x86 have the advantage because you can install TrueNAS.
I'm still hopeful TruNAS Core will make it's way to ARM64 sooner or later... But seeing better Intel/AMD low power cores is good too!
I love the rPi content, but any interest in expanding to other SBC's? Intel based ones like Up Board?
Would the 4TB Seagate ST4000LM024 fit on that taco?
That's a good question-I *think* it would, at least in four of the five slots, on the board I have. I think Radxa might even have a slight tweak to the board for the final version that would allow five to be mounted. We'll have to wait and see!
How would performance be affected if the Taco had a RAID controller chip onboard? Since PCIe speed is directly affecting the soft RAID functions I’m thinking a RAID chip would speed things up considerably because the SoC has no role in it and all the writes occur after the PCIe bus.
I have one of these and after trying to use it I somehow copied a file onto the Lenix boot USB and I can’t get it removed so I cannot do anything with the HDMI on system.
So I would probably use your pie one because it seems my has flaws what I can’t actually fix
Jeff, I’m building an extension to my house, and you’ll learn a bungle of new stuff, the job starts at 06:00hrs and finishes at 18:00hrs, and by the way don’t forget to bring your lunch, BTW i love guys that don’t but a monetary value on their time.
Hi Mr. Geerling. I loved the video! It's a real shame that raspberry pis have been getting so hard to find for a decent price recently... I've been wanting to build a home NAS for a long time, but I only have a Pi4 with me, not a compute module. Any chance you would make a quick roundup of cool hats and expansions for the good ol' regular pi form factor?
Hey does anyone know where i can get my hands on of the Radxa's Tacos
Seems it is still sold out, have you found a similar board?
@@maxs.8146 nope not yet
@@rangiert it seems the best alternative is the ”Axzez Interceptor Carrier Board“, but I would prefer the Radxa Taco
i don't understand half technical language but i trust you and learn a lot !!
SO, can I run a Jellyfin server on the Raxsa Taco? Would I be better using a full pi cluster for that? Or should I stick to my old Intel setup?
I'd love to see you make a Gluster stack with a few Pis and show how even servers can be redundant, not just disks!
Did you compare NFS performance to SMB? It might be put a little less load on the CPU leading to better throughput?!
Nice Iron Man reference @00:07
I understood that reference!
Thanks again Jeff!
last shot, a real ghost in the machine,
also my synology nas+bose soundtouch+tv gets turned off when not in use, no standby power ...
That Rocky Linux shirt 😍
Any update on how to get a Radxa Taco? Is it still in pre-release or is it so backlogged for parts that they’re not even accepting orders, the wiki doesn’t mention release timeframe or ways to purchase.
No link to Part 1 in description?...
Could you test Nextcloud Pi on the Tacco Board?
That ending sounded like your rusty cargo ship getting ready for warp speed and have your ear on the engine.
Link to round 1 of this series??
For a lot of people there isn't even a need to go as far as buying a Taco. My current NAS setup is a pi 4b with 2 2tb hard drives attached to it via the usb 3 ports. Yes its not the best, but setup for this was pretty simple, and super cheap. For me I primarily use this as a backup storage solution, and as a way to transfer files between my PC, laptop, phone and a way to access it outside. I get about 60-80 mb read and write, and again, while not the best, its more than enough for my basic needs. I think the whole thing cost me about $200.
It would be awesome if they had a hacked up version of Synology DSM that you could put on this.
What the heck were those HDDs doing during that spin-up phase... Sounds so scary! Were they damaged?
Thanks for the great learning value, as usual, Jeff! :)
Hey man where do you buy your rpi4 modules? cause I havent been able to find any.
I get why its easier to design a nice pluggable 2.5" drive build. Clean and straightforward.
But the price/TB ratios make them useless unless you are going for FAST storage.
Fast, minimal latency, and blissful silence. These NAS drives are often pretty loud! But cheap per TB.
@@JeffGeerling NAS noise is ok since you can tuck it away as far as you can pull some ethernet.
I'd LOVE a solution that had the ports spaced for 3.5" and the PSU prepared for the draw. Then I would have a complete clean build with 1 board, 1 printed case, 1 psu and 1 unobtanium RPI CM4
I connected a DAS to a raspberry pi 4 and now I get the best of both worlds: the pi cpu mostly free to run other stuff and a fast, network-accessible, redundant storage.
@@r0galik how did you connect a DAS to a Pi?
@@UnreasonableSteve through USB, easy. It's a D5-300 from Terra-Master. Works with ext4 as well
5:26 - you mean version 6?
Would any of these approaches work for Plex with transcoding and adding subtitles?
And file backup of course
I'm a bit sad that Plex performance was not evaluated here, but otherwise a good review.
Where is the case for the taco?
We've gone from the age of paid advertising content to the dawn of free testing on monetized RUclips content. Ain't the internet grand?
I thought a lot about building my own NAS based upon the Pi as well as building my own NAS using off-the-shelf PC/server components and after many hours of research, decided to go with a dedicated NAS box instead. Now don't get me wrong, I know Linux and am comfortable with it from running a tiny Pi NAS (DietPi FTW!) for several years and I still run a Pi-powered amateur radio hotspot. But after many more hours of research comparing the various NAS devices out there (ASUStor QNAP, Synology, Terramaster, etc.) I went with the ASUStor Lockerstor4 for being the lowest-cost option that would allow me to have dual 1TB nvme drives in a RAID1 config for the OS/stuff as well as dual 8TB drives in a RAID1 and then two separate MyArchive volumes - one to backup the 8TB RAID1 storage volume to on a nightly basis, and another for just playing around with. Of course I also upgraded the total RAM in it to 32GB instead of the meager amount it came with - and yes, while not officially stated by ASUS, 32GB of DDR4 RAM does work in it because it's supported by the CPU. I also bonded the two 2.5GbE ports on my Unifi switch so while I'm not getting the full 5Gbps I still do get at least 2Gbps through it while also providing for interface failover in case of a port or interface failure on either end. It also lives on the same dedicated UPS for my networking equipment which provides almost 2 hours of power for the entire stack and it's configured to shut itself down when the power is out and only 30 minutes of run time are remaining on the UPS. Even with two switches, an AP, firewall, and the Lockerstor4 the UPS is only at 7% load at any given time.
I use it for Plex, as well as for running a Unifi Controller and Home Assistant in separate VirtualBox machines (they run better that way than in Docker), as well as running many Docker containers to handle web-based services such as Whoogle, Mealie, Deluge, Uptime-Kuma, Wallabag, NextCloud, Photoprism, MeTube, Kiwix, Calibre Web, Adguard Home, Portainer, Stringer RSS, OSINT portal, ZeroTier controller, and Flame and Homer link dashboards. And all of it backed up every 24 hours to a separate 8TB drive in the Lockerstor4 and backed up to secure cloud storage every week.
And with ZeroTier I can now access everything on it securely from anywhere on the planet using any of my mobile devices (phones, tablets, laptops) without opening any holes in my firewall and having to put it all behind Cloudflare or configuring any VPN client access. It just works. It's how I watch Plex videos from the road.
Of course I'm not the normal user.
Really interesting ! Very usefull info... thnxs for sharing.
What software with TACO IS best for setting up cloud storage / remote login storage? (Less programming additions also?. I may setup (1pi4 and 1-8tb 3.5 internal drive)…. 3 units. But I need to know if power from PI4 can run that hdd? What cable do I need? Software?
I used to use Odroid (No longer avail).
Hey Jeff! I have at home a 6 drive RAID 5 array running on my CM4. I too had similar speeds via Samba.
My solution to increase the speeds was to overclock the Pi to 2GHz. That increased the speeds to 100MB/s, almost saturating my 1Gbps connection.
Maybe try an overclock with your Pi and see if that brings any improvement to the table as it did for me. I did end up putting a cooler on it to keep it chill, because the SATA card and the Pi's CPU got pretty toasty while reading and writing data.
What about updates?
On one hand you want to have regular updates, but on the other hand you don‘t want to restart the nas weekly. I had a qnap nas that needed weekly restarts due to updates. That was annoying as my vms used the nas as iscsi storage…
Happy with my self build truenas box, but it has a bit a bigger power draw …
You don't have to restart weekly if you don't want. We support scheduling your updates at your convenience. Monthly? Yearly? It's up to you!
That's something I will spend my time on. Hell yeah!
The taco needs an audible signal to indicate completion of transfer: the taco-tell.
Could install a bell using GPIO... The taco-bell.
@@JeffGeerling Ah right! I'd forgotten rPi also have GPIO pins! Hm.. maybe then an actual bell right? Could even make it purple, get TacoBell to sponsor the video and raffle it off xD
nice asmr towards the ending.
Dirty hands > the best kind.
.
.
.
Most of the time, at least.
(machine coming alive @12:23 is also a sign of the heavens, though)
Red shirt Jeff needs to look up choosing graph colors for the colorblind in mind.
Sorry about that; I switched up the colors for this video not even thinking about that! I'll go back to defaults next time.
Have You ever tried Rockstor for Pi?
No, haven't tried it.
Jeff - Is it possible to connect a Raspberry pi 4 with a QNAP TL-D800C. I want a Non-raid solution to connect mass storage to the Pi 4 without the noise and heavy power usage. Would this work?
You almost pulled a Linus in the outtake part!
hi jeff can you do a video of axzez interceptor carrier board ?
Performance is one thing, but so is longevity. I know I'll be able to get security updates for my pi rig forever, even if that means changing the OS some day. The same thing cannot be said about my 8 year old WD NAS which performs just fine but I have to run it air gapped due to their lackadaisical security responses. Obviously an air gapped Nas isn't fulfilling its design goals.
That sucks! Fortunately even our first-ever NAS devices still receive security updates despite being 10 years old this year!
I am thinking about a NAS. It would be used for Plex mostly and some limited web page access. I will look at the ASUSTOR (unknown to me) along with the Sysnegry 5 bay system. I like the Pi because of the control I can have on it. Any comments? Thanks in advance.