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60
UGREEN enters Network Attached Storage (NAS) market with diverse Linux-based NASync lineup (betanews.com)
submitted 7 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] 86 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (5 children)

The preloaded spyware OS is half baked, horribly unfinished, and also locked to the hardware. You can work around it to install your own OS but they provide zero support and explicitly say it is not supposed to be allowed by ToS while intentionally making it as hard as possible by making the BIOS inaccessible and digitally signed to their own OS. Fuck that.

The crowdfunding fundraiser (where there are zero penalties if things are shipped broken, incomplete or not at all) is super fishy and the non-discount price is astronomical. While the hardware looks nice... Hard, hard pass right now, stinks of vendor lockin and illegal data vacuuming. Do not buy.

Source video: https://youtu.be/Y_MgY7wgII8

[–] [email protected] 35 points 7 months ago (4 children)

Yeah, I've got a bunch of Ugreen hardware (external HDD enclosures, USB hubs, adapters, etc.), but there's no way I'd get their hardware with an OS on it. I don't trust the brand that much.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You shouldn't trust ANY brand's pre-installed OS when it comes to your personal data to be honest.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago (1 children)

QNAP is taiwanese and still providing software patches for my 8 year old NAS. I think they are reasonably trustworthy

But i agree with you, i'm going to build my own NAS from scratch this year...

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

I have zero trust in QNAP. QNAP knowingly sold several NASes with a known clock-drift defect in their Intel J1900 CPUs and then refused to provide any support. A bunch of community members had to figure out how to solder a resistor to temporarily revive their bricked NASes in order to retrieve their data. https://forum.qnap.com/viewtopic.php?t=135089

I had a TS-453 Pro and my friend had a TS-451. Both mine and his exhibited this issue and refused to boot. After this debacle and the extreme apathy from their support, I vowed to never buy a pre-built NAS.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Not to mention the sheer amount of security vulnerabilities they constantly have in their products. I never recommend QNAP for that reason. Out of the box solutions I only recommend Synology. Selfbuild route is uraid and my personal fav. Truenas scale.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Man, I have GOT to try Truenas Scale one of these days. I see it recommended so often, but I was just too used to a standard Linux ecosystem to bother learning something new. I am assuming it gets you closer to the feel of a pre-built NAS during administration tasks compared to Cockpit and a SSH session lmao.

I think I am just always afraid of being locked into a specific way of doing things by a vendor. I feel like I would get annoyed if something that I could do easily on standard Linux was harder to do on Truenas Scale.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

For sure. It's basically a NAS software appliance. You just need to bring your own x86 hardware. Truenas core was good, but they will stop actively developing soon in favor for scale.

I have it running both hardware (backup) as well as virtualized (with a special sas/sata card as PCI pass thru). Works like a charm.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Get an x86 Qnap and put Truenas Scale on it - there is no case in that form factor in existence.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (1 children)
[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Does this have a backplane?

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

More than likely. Since the description clearly states "8x3.5 HDD Hot-Swap drive bays." It's not the only case of similar form factor that you can get 8 hot swap drive bays. There are literally tons of NAS case designs to choose from.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've had a look and sadly, they are not available in Europe (at least for any reasonable price).

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

I've built every NAS/home server I've ever had. There's lots of options out there for the case as well. You could take an SFF Mini ITX case with a single 5 1/4" drive bay and put an icy dock 8 x 2.5" SATA backplane in it. Don't know if icy dock (brand) is widely available in Europe...

Just pointing out that if you imagine it (form factor with 8 hot swappable drives) there's probably a solution to build it from scratch.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

You could do all that, yes - but that's not really "replacing" a Synology IMHO. The point is that you don't really have to think about putting it all together correctly - put the drives in, install your OS of choice and that's it.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Get an x86 Qnap and put Truenas Scale on it - there is no case in that form factor in existence.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Wow, did not know this...

I think i will accelerate my plans for a new NAS lol

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Do it anyway and put an x86 OS on one of the "standard UEFI" versions. There's no other Hardware better on the market for this - even self build isn't going to come close, there's simply no case with 8 hotswap slots (for example).

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

I did order the 4800+. I have no need for the Ugreen OS and will replace it.
Every report I have read about say that the hardware looks very good for the (kickstarter) price

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

But if the EFI is locked and you have to use a workaround to boot?

I'd wait a real review before purchasing a "e-waste bomb"

The real reason the hardware is locked to their Linux distro is that the moment they discontinue security updates, it immediately becomes e-waste and you have to buy a new one instead of use it until it physically breaks. This approach works great on Apple devices, who have a 5-7 year lifetime from market launch

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

If Synology decides to not support your NAS it can't even load anything else. Synology dexided for the DS218j (or DS220j) that it suddenly can't use BTRFS anymore. If I remember it correctly it was due to not having enough memory.
But that was only after the upgrade to DSM 7.x
Yet I see only confused posts on the web instead of rage and "I wont bzy Synology anymore".

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago (2 children)

What do people think of their hardware in general?

I have some caddies HDD and NVMe. I think their gear is fairly mid. some aspects are quite nice but other aspects is dog water.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

What do people think of their hardware in general?

I've been very happy with their external HDD enclosures, and various USB chargers.

Their USB car charger has been the only one to survive Canadian winters and summers for more than a year (going on 4), which is impressive.

I'd say their quality is as good, or better, than most of the Anker stuff I've purchased.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

They have some of the best USB cables (strongest, least breakable). Used to be cheap too until they started spending big bucks on marketing.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

As a comparison against Anker, the cables are thinner - almost as thin as the cheap unbranded cables. Or at least this is what my ugreen cables are like.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You need those metal ones with braided cable

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

This is what I was already comparing. Ugreen make thinner cables?

[–] [email protected] -1 points 7 months ago

In my experience they're very solid. They also have thicker PD charging cables.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Is my phone charger spying on me?

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (1 children)

The preloaded spyware OS

Nowhere in that video did it say this. I am all for DIY NAS and I have an Arch-based one at home, but saying this while implying that that's what the source video you linked said is a bit disingenuous.

To be honest, nothing about this UGREEN is any different from any of the other off-the-shelf NAS solutions out there like QNAP, Synology, etc. If you don't trust the UGREEN pre-installed OS, you shouldn't trust any of the other ones either. I am not saying you should, but my point is that this pretty par for the course as far as pre-built NASes go.

Most companies do not provide support if you install a custom OS. That isn't a sign of vendor lock-in, just a matter of keeping support feasible in the long-term, especially since they're relatively new at this. If you want a custom OS, it is far easier and cheaper to just build your own.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago

Exactly, there's valid complaints, but they are clutching at straws and just lying in their comment.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago) (1 children)

Bummer, the formfactor / specs look okay but it's kind of a dead end if I can't just install & use a vanilla Debian OS or similar.

With all the NAS OS options probably Synology has the best one but even there I don't actually want to get locked into that. I doubt this UGOS software can match Synology's let alone Debian.

If it's any consolation it looks like UGREEN is responding to comments about installing other OSes at their kickstarter page https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/urgreen/ugreen-nasync-next-level-storage-limitless-possibilities/comments

[–] [email protected] 3 points 7 months ago (1 children)

You can. But you need to circumvent the default settings and deactivate the watchdog in the UEFI.
There are already guides out there by reviewers. Youtube review about the NAS and how they replace the OS (around 11:00min)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

Youtube review

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 7 months ago

Yup it's absolutely horrible all around.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Here is an alternative Piped link(s):

https://piped.video/Y_MgY7wgII8

Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.

I'm open-source; check me out at GitHub.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 7 months ago (3 children)

Depending on the price I would like to use to replace my Synology, I will strip os and run standard Debian.

Sadly is very hard to repurpose an Synology.

[–] [email protected] 9 points 7 months ago

I will strip os and run standard Debian.

This is the problem, it seems to be very hardware do it because the UEFI is inaccessible and the OS is signed. Kobol was our one and true hope for an open and well designed NAS solutions however they quit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 7 months ago (1 children)

QNAP x86, standard uefi! Can run anything. Been running mine with Proxmox, ZFS, Runtipi and others. Easy GUI setup for everything, Runtipi is just clicking add for various things.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Wait which model line? I never knew one could run their own OS on QNAP

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago (1 children)

Basically, all of those https://www.qnap.com/en/how-to/faq/article/nas-recovery-guide-for-x86-based-nas There are some older models that can only boot from the DOM, however most newer ones (especially the AMD Ryzen ones, which i personally would highly recommend) have no issue. The early TS-X77 models do not boot from NVME, but that can be overcome with some creativity :)

[–] [email protected] 1 points 7 months ago

Hmm, how do I know which models can only boot from the DOM? AFAIK Terramaster NASes don't have such restrictions.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago

Consider TrueNAS Scale with mirrored drive pairs DIY.

[–] [email protected] 6 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

I call the 10-feet-pole on this one.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 7 months ago* (last edited 7 months ago)

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

Fewer Letters More Letters
NAS Network-Attached Storage
NVMe Non-Volatile Memory Express interface for mass storage
SATA Serial AT Attachment interface for mass storage
SSH Secure Shell for remote terminal access
ZFS Solaris/Linux filesystem focusing on data integrity

5 acronyms in this thread; the most compressed thread commented on today has 8 acronyms.

[Thread #631 for this sub, first seen 27th Mar 2024, 01:25] [FAQ] [Full list] [Contact] [Source code]