CES 2024: Ugreen Unveils NASync Network Attached Storage Series

[Digital Skunk]

Having been happy with my Drobo for years (and it still works perfectly) I'll pass on this system.

1.) Drobo basically no longer exists so my drive is a ticking time bomb.
2.) Other companies such as Synology and QNAP were around back then making drives and still are. So I'm going to upgrade to one of their systems.

3.) suggestions welcomed, and I'll check Ugreen out, but I don't want to get hosed again.

 

[G5isAlive]

Dazzling hardware specs, but for NAS's to be successful it's about the software. I use Macs for their relative ease of use, privacy, and long sturdy life. I dont buy them on specs. Likewise I want my data to be easy to access, under my control, and robust. A lot of that comes down to software. For me, that's been Synology, perhaps the Macs of the NAS world. I dont have to be an IT guy, self trained or not, to use it. I recognize their hardware could use more features, like 10 Gb ethernet, but live with the limits for the software. Hopefully Synology ups their hardware game, but eh, QNAP hasn't gotten them to budge either so I wont hold my breath. I dont see me changing for an unproven system.

 

[dlopan]

USB 2? come on. rest seems ok but lots of questions

 

[nuckinfutz]

I don't see anything that is unique about this NAS. Everyone at this level has AI, SSD caching and other stuff. It seems to be fairly standard so I don't know why a Kickstarter is necessary.

It'll be interesting to see how it compares to the upcoming TerraMaster NAS units which you can easily replace the TOS software with Unraid.

 

[lazyrighteye]

AI this... AI that...

A & I Already Making Play for 2024’s Vowel(s) of the Year Top Spot
Move over iProduct. So long, eThing. There’s new vowel [pairing] in town. In a Vowel of the Year first, the pairing of both A & I look to be making a strong, if not early, play for VOTY’s coveted top spot. Everywhere you turn, expect to see the unavoidable duo front and center - even the unlikeliest of spaces.

 

[hugo7]

AI this... AI that...

NAS AI assistant: “Here are some alternative suggestions for your 2001 movie choice” 😬

 

[fhall1]

Having been happy with my Drobo for years (and it still works perfectly) I'll pass on this system.

1.) Drobo basically no longer exists so my drive is a ticking time bomb.
2.) Other companies such as Synology and QNAP were around back then making drives and still are. So I'm going to upgrade to one of their systems.

3.) suggestions welcomed, and I'll check Ugreen out, but I don't want to get hosed again.

I have a Synology DS211 (that's right - from 2011), that ran two 2TB seagate drives in RAID 1 (basically 2TB usable space) since it was new, until 2022 when one of the drives crapped out. No data lost. Replaced both drives with 4TB ones, still RAID 1 (so - doubled the usable space). Took over a day to rebuild the RAID set, but the NAS is still humming along nicely almost 13 years later.

 

[Skyscraperfan]

Are spinning disks still a thing? SSDs have become so cheap.

 

[DonutHands]

Kickstarter?! Can’t say my faith in a company increases when they resort to kickstarter.

They may just be using the platform to judge interest. Its a pretty big investment to jump into a brand new market and Kickstarter is a great way to get pre sale numbers. How many here would sign up for a ugreen account and place a pre order vs how many would be more tempted using their existing kickstarter account and saved paymeny method to show their interest.

 

[fhall1]

Are spinning disks still a thing? SSDs have become so cheap.

Still a thing if you want to fill your NAS with drives over 8TB each or greater

 

[DonutHands]

Are spinning disks still a thing? SSDs have become so cheap.

Not for those that have 40TB storage pools.

 

[klasma]

NAS AI assistant: “Here are some alternative suggestions for your 2001 movie choice” 😬

Here’s what I found on the internet for “were are my files”.

 

[zorinlynx]

It feels like companies are trying to shoehorn the term "AI" into everything, even stuff where it makes no sense.

It's storage. Just... store my data. That's it. I actually get *concerned* if a storage device is trying to "think" in any manner. Just. store. my. data.

 

[zubikov]

This is an impressive way to show up to a very established market. Hope they make a crack in it and keep pushing the home backup, storage and server devices forward.

The OS is very important for these things, and so is the suite of mobile and desktop apps. Let’s see what they do with it.

 

[bergert]

How much do these cost because I wanted to make a low powered NAS drive to store my media as well as Time Machine backups

The i5 has a TDP of 117W - about the same as my MacMini M1 with an 8-disk Thunderbolt-array (Mini+8 slot TB RAID+8 disks). The 8 disks (super-secure RAID-6) hold my data and TimeMachine.

 

[Analog Kid]

Having been happy with my Drobo for years (and it still works perfectly) I'll pass on this system.

1.) Drobo basically no longer exists so my drive is a ticking time bomb.
2.) Other companies such as Synology and QNAP were around back then making drives and still are. So I'm going to upgrade to one of their systems.

3.) suggestions welcomed, and I'll check Ugreen out, but I don't want to get hosed again.

Drobo is such a disappointment...

I bought into the Drobo vision in the beginning as it seemed to be exactly that I'd hoped: an inexpensive, low maintenance, direct attach drive bay that I could mix and match whatever drives I had laying around to build out for bulk storage.

Then I wanted to switch to 2-disk redundancy, so I updated to a larger drive and needed to let it repair itself before I could switch the redundancy setting-- since the new capacity exceeded the max the file system could support it added a separate volume to account for the added capacity. Turned on 2-disk redundancy, the capacity contracted again, but I couldn't get rid of that zero sized volume. I contacted support to see if there was a way and they refused to answer the question without me entering into support contract.

The answer to the question for all I can tell, was "no". I can't remove that useless volume and was doomed to have to manually eject it for the rest of the life of the Drobo. That's a problem. The bigger problem for me was that they essentially wanted hundreds of dollars for that one word answer that should have been listed in their documentation somewhere.

Then I started to realize that their file system is completely proprietary and the longer I used that device the more I was going to become dependent on a company whose business model was extorting support contracts.

Anyway, that's a long story to get to the point that I switched over to Synology and have found their hardware to be solid and their support to be quite good. I get an answer if I have a question, their forums are well trafficked, and the one time I had a power supply glitch they replaced it without hesitation.

I do worry that Synology is getting confident in their market position and they seem to be slowly tightening the vice on licensing for some parts of their system-- it's hasn't affected me yet but, AI nonsense aside, I'm glad to see there's another viable competitor coming online to keep them humble.

 

[Analog Kid]

It feels like companies are trying to shoehorn the term "AI" into everything, even stuff where it makes no sense.

It's storage. Just... store my data. That's it. I actually get *concerned* if a storage device is trying to "think" in any manner. Just. store. my. data.

Yeah, it gives me the same uneasy feeling as the phrase "innovative banking". Don't innovate, just hold onto my money until I ask for it back...

 

[k1121j]

Looking to update my SYNOLOGY NAS do these run Plex and Homebridge its a must for me

 

[Dirty Mac]

No problems with my Qnap... introduced in 2018 and it still gets firmware updates.

 

[k1121j]

Drobo is such a disappointment...

I bought into the Drobo vision in the beginning as it seemed to be exactly that I'd hoped: an inexpensive, low maintenance, direct attach drive bay that I could mix and match whatever drives I had laying around to build out for bulk storage.

Then I wanted to switch to 2-disk redundancy, so I updated to a larger drive and needed to let it repair itself before I could switch the redundancy setting-- since the new capacity exceeded the max the file system could support it added a separate volume to account for the added capacity. Turned on 2-disk redundancy, the capacity contracted again, but I couldn't get rid of that zero sized volume. I contacted support to see if there was a way and they refused to answer the question without me entering into support contract.

The answer to the question for all I can tell, was "no". I can't remove that useless volume and was doomed to have to manually eject it for the rest of the life of the Drobo. That's a problem. The bigger problem for me was that they essentially wanted hundreds of dollars for that one word answer that should have been listed in their documentation somewhere.

Then I started to realize that their file system is completely proprietary and the longer I used that device the more I was going to become dependent on a company whose business model was extorting support contracts.

Anyway, that's a long story to get to the point that I switched over to Synology and have found their hardware to be solid and their support to be quite good. I get an answer if I have a question, their forums are well trafficked, and the one time I had a power supply glitch they replaced it without hesitation.

I do worry that Synology is getting confident in their market position and they seem to be slowly tightening the vice on licensing for some parts of their system-- it's hasn't affected me yet but, AI nonsense aside, I'm glad to see there's another viable competitor coming online to keep them humble.

100% agree i did the Drobo thing had tons on problems now using Synology so far im happy it runs plex, homebridge and functions as a time machine backup disk for 3 computers. I've been lookin for a new NAS that supports 2.5G network connections but i need it to do all the things im doing with my Synology.

 

[DarthDon]

Intel + AI - stopped reading. It's just unsafe.

 

[justperry]

Weirdo's, all at the same price point.

Interesting Ui, Docker and VM Apps

 

[stiligFox]

Kickstarter?! Can’t say my faith in a company increases when they resort to kickstarter. That’s ok for scrappy diy guys in a garage, but otherwise what does it mean? The company is too poor to finance R&D? Why would I want a product from such a poorly performing company? They’re too cheap to finance it? Why would I want a product that the company doesn’t have enough faith in to finance it themselves?

The NAS space needs competition. The demand is there. So I’m happy when a new entrant throws in their hat. But it can’t be a half @$$ed effort.

And the time to check it out is when there’s actually a price announced. Until then, it’s just more vaporware waste of time.

It’s sort of an interest check more than anything, to see how many potential buyers they have. The issue is that while they could spin up a whole production line of these, what’s the point of making them if there’s little interest? I see more and more big companies using Kickstarter as a means to market research instead of the traditional ways.

Even Hasbro will do crowd sourcing for some of their more boutique, large models. Hasbro!

 

[szw-mapple fan]

Kickstarter?! Can’t say my faith in a company increases when they resort to kickstarter. That’s ok for scrappy diy guys in a garage, but otherwise what does it mean? The company is too poor to finance R&D? Why would I want a product from such a poorly performing company? They’re too cheap to finance it? Why would I want a product that the company doesn’t have enough faith in to finance it themselves?

Most kickstarters from established manufacturers are done to gauge interest from consumers and to help them decide on how much manufacturing capacity to allocate without the pressure to ship immediately. They function essentially like a group buy and is also another way to advertise a product (“look at how many people funded this new product of ours!”). I honestly don’t mind this model since there’s a pretty low chance of getting scammed and you often get a hefty discount.

 

[japanime]

Take it for what it is, I have had zero issues with three Synology's and one QNAP. All are going strong and all are working as intended. I have had the QNAP the longest at over seven years. My Synology coming in at just under six years. With the exception of the QNAP, all are running on the latest's versions of the software and upgrades have been breeze. I have had a few disk failures which resulted in zero data loss and zero issues with any of my data.

Having said that... I know lots of of folks in the forums and on reddit have had some issues.

Asus has a line of NAS devices of varying price points under their Asuster brand which have gotten really good reviews, and many of them have features like 2.5 Gbe ethernet standard. I looked at those before deciding on simply building a Linux-based mini-PC for my NAS needs.

Thanks for the feedback. Because I need to backup archives that I will rarely need to access, I might just do DAS and clone two drives, storing one locally and another offsite. If that's a bad idea, though, I'm willing to be talked out of it.