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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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
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
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".
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.
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.
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)