nas News - Page 10 of 17 - CNX Software

November 15, 2017November 15, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 13 Comments

QNAP QBoat Sunny IoT Mini Server Board Officially Announced with Annapurna Labs AL-314 ARM Processor

We first had a glance at QNAP QBoat Sunny at CES 2017. At the time, QNAP IoT development board was powered by an Intel AnyWAN GRX750 dual core Atom based processor with 2GB RAM, 4GB flash, three Gigabit Ethernet ports, some mSATA slot and so on. The company has now officially announced the board, but with a twist, as the Intel processor has been replaced by Annapurna Labs (now part of Amazon) AL-314 quad core ARM Cortex-15 processor instead, and left most of the other features pretty much unchanged. QBoard Sunny board specifications: Processor – Annapurna Labs AL-314 quad core ARM Cortex-15 processor up to 1.7 GHz System Memory – 2GB DDR3L Storage – 512MB NAND flash, 2x M.2 2260/2280 SATA slots for SSDs (Key M) Network connectivity – 3x Gigabit Ethernet USB – 2x USB 3.1 Gen1 ports Audio – 3.5mm audio out jack, 3.5mm audio in jack Expansion […]

November 9, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Giveaway Week Winners – November 2017

Like every year, I’ve organized a giveaway week to send some of the items I’ve reviewed in the past year or so. There was a good mix of devices this year starting with a mini Linux NAS kit, following by some ESP32 boards, and Amlogic development boards among others. The results are in, and instead of 10 winners, I actually have 11 winners due a “timing issue”, and to make for one missing ESP32 board, a LinkIt Smart 7688 Duo board was also given away. While it started strongly for Eastern Europe, We have winners from 3 continents this year: NanoPi NEO2 NAS Kit – Hap Hapablap, Serbia Muses Beta DVB Encoder and Modulator Board – Luka, Slovenia ESP32 PICO Kit v3 boards (5 Winners): Andrius Kurtinaitis, Lithuania (2x ESP32 boards) Kebab, Turkey (2x ESP32 boards) Zoobab, Belgium (2x ESP32 boards) Sollie, Germany (2x ESP32 boards) BobR, USA (1x ESP32 […]

October 30, 2017November 1, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 179 Comments

Giveaway Week – NanoPi NEO NAS Kit with NEO 2 Board

Time has come to organize another giveaway week. I used to mainly give away TV boxes, but due to recent regulations that will not be possible anymore, and instead this giveaway week will include Linux and IoT development boards, and other accessories. I’ll start with NanoPi NEO NAS Kit v1.2. NanoPi NEO NAS Kit v1.2 is a low cost kit NanoPi NEO or NEO 2 board that takes a 2.5″ hard drive. I’ve tested it with NanoPi NEO 2 board and OpenMediaVault, and found to perform optimally for this type of device (USB 2.0 to SATA), with SAMBA reads & writes achieving 40 MB/s. The hardware given away includes the NAS Kit v1.2 and a NanoPi NEO 2 board. You’ll just need to add a micro SD card with the OMV image, a hard drive, and a 12V/2A (or greater) power supply. To enter the draw simply leave a comment […]

October 11, 2017October 12, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 20 Comments

GNUBee Personal Cloud 2 is a DIY NAS Supporting up to Six 3.5″ SATA Drives (Crowdfunding)

GNUBee Personal Cloud 1 is a DIY NAS powered by Mediatek MT7621A MIPS processor that supports up to 2.5″ SATA drives, and runs free and open source software. It was first introduced in March of this year through a CrowdSupply campaign. The developers are now back with GNUBee Personal Cloud 2 (GB-PC2) with pretty much the same features, but instead of being designed for 2.5″ drives, it supports up to six 3.5″ drive that should offer either more capacity, or a lower total price for an equivalent capacity. GB-PC2 NAS specifications: Processor – MediaTek MT7621A dual core, quad thread MIPS processor @ 880 MHz, overclockable to 1.2 GHz System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 (max supported by MT7621) Storage – SD card slot tested up to 64 GB, 6x 3.5” SATA HDD or SSD (recommended RAID 0 or 1 under LVM, MD, or Linux MD RAID 10) Connectivity – 3x […]

August 21, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 15 Comments

Hardkernel ODROID-HC1 Home Cloud One Stackable NAS is now available for $49

Hardkernel has just launched their ODROID-HC1 stackable NAS system based on a cost-down version of ODROID-XU4 board powered by Samsung Exynos 5422 octa-core Cortex-A15/A7 processor, which as previously expect, you can purchase for $49 on Hardkernel website, or distributors like Ameridroid. We now have the complete specifications for ODROID-HC1 (Home Cloud One) platform: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5422 octa-core processor with 4x ARM Cortex-A15 @ 2.0 GHz, 4x ARM Cortex-A7 @ 1.4GHz, and Mali-T628 MP6 GPU supporting OpenGL ES 3.0 / 2.0 / 1.1 and OpenCL 1.1 Full profile System Memory – 2GB LPDDR3 RAM PoP @ 750 MHz Storage UHS-1 micro SD slot up to 128GB SATA interface via JMicron JMS578 USB 3.0 to SATA bridge chipset capable of achieving ~300 MB/s transfer rates The case supports 2.5″ drives between 7mm and 15mm thick Network Connectivity – 10/100/1000Mbps Ethernet (via USB 3.0) USB – 1x USB 2.0 port Debugging […]

August 12, 2017August 12, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 33 Comments

$15 Orange Pi Zero Plus Board Released with Allwinner H5 SoC, Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi, and SPI flash

We had Orange Pi Zero, followed by Orange Pi Zero Plus 2, then Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 H5, but now there’s another “Zero” model that’s called Orange Pi Zero Plus, which like Orange Pi Zero Plus 2 H5 board is based on Allwinner H5 processor, but adds a faster Gigabit Ethernet port, and offers a fairly different features set compared to the first Orange Pi H5 board, albeit in the same form factor. Orange Pi Zero Plus specifications with highlights in bold and stricken-through showing difference with Orange Pi Plus 2 H5 model: SoC – Allwinner H5 quad core Cortex A53 processor with hexa core Mali-450MP4 GPU System Memory – 512 MB DDR3 Storage – 8GB eMMC flash, micro SD card slot + 2MB SPI flash Video Output – HDMI ; AV port via 13-pin header Connectivity – Gigabit Ethernet, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi (Realtek RTL8189FTV) with u.FL antenna connector […]

August 10, 2017August 11, 2017 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 59 Comments

Hardkernel to Launch Stackable $49 ODROID-HC1 Home Cloud & $200 ODROID-MC1 Cluster Solutions

Hardkernel ODROID-XU4 board is a powerful – yet inexpensive – ARM board based on Exynos 5422 octa-core processor that comes with 2GB RAM, Gigabit Ethernet, and a USB 3.0 interface which makes it suitable for networked storage applications. But the company found out that many of their users had troubles because of bad USB cables, and/or poorly designed & badly supported USB to SATA bridge chipsets. So they started to work on a new board called ODROID-HC1 (HC = Home Cloud) based on ODROID-XU4 design to provide a solution that’s both easier to ease and cheaper, and also includes a metal case and space for 2.5″ drives. They basically remove all unneeded features from ODROID-XU4 such as HDMI, eMMC connector, USB 3.0 hub, power button, slide switch, etc… The specifications for ODROID-HC1 kit with ODROID-XU4S board should look like: SoC – Samsung Exynos 5422 quad core ARM Cortex-A15 @ 2.0GHz […]

August 7, 2017May 26, 2018 by Jean-Luc Aufranc (CNXSoft) - 25 Comments

ROCK64 Board Review – Part 2: Quick Start Guide with Ubuntu 16.04.3 MATE, Multimedia Features, Some Benchmarks

Pine64 ROCK64 is the first maker board based on Rockchip RK3328 processor, and is potentially interesting for various applications including network storage thanks to USB 3.0 and Gigabit Ethernet, multimedia applications with 4K HDR video support, as well as other applications requiring I/Os. I’ve already tested Rock64 board with Android 7.1 operating system, so today I’ll report by finding and experience with Ubuntu 16.04.3 with MATE desktop. Selecting and Flashing a Linux Image You’ll find several operating systems in the Wiki, but you’ll also find more cutting edge images in ayufan’s github. But first let me explain some vocabulary used for Pine64 firmware files: Engineering version – Becomes with release build based on the stock build develop by Pine64 and the SoC vendor. It’s supposed to be more stable, but get less updates Community versions (currently managed via ayufan) are more frequently updates, and comes with more recent features. You’ll find […]