Small CWWK N100 based NAS

[misterlegend]

I decided to take HexOS for a spin. I've got a couple of TrueNAS servers and know full well how challenging it can be. I was curious to see if HexOS is something I could setup for someone else w/o needing to be their forever tech support.

I put together this CWWK S11 NAS quickly when the sale went live.
It has an Intel N100, 32GB of DDR4, and an SK Hynix OEM 256GB OS drive.
For storage there are 4x Seagate Ironwolf Pros from a retired Plex NAS.

Installation was quite simple and went quickly. I did run into a hiccup with deck.hexos.com taking about 20 mins to see my NAS, but I just kinda went off to do something else and it was detected by the time I got back.
The promise of an offline interface is definitely the only reason I tried it. As long as that is 100% going to happen, I like what I see. It's pretty keen of the devs to make Immich first app they had ready in the beta. If you can make that painless, you've won. And it was painless. I was up and running and dumping images into it within minutes. Very much akin to grabbing an app from the QNAP or Synology store. Keep up the good work!

[Theo]

Nice stuff! curious, what case is that?

[misterlegend]

26 minutes ago, Theo said:

Nice stuff! curious, what case is that?

Thanks! It was part of the NAS kit. It looks nice on the outside, but it is VERY thin metal. Even if they could sell it separately, I wouldn't recommend it unless it was like $50 lol.

Edited December 8, 2024 by misterlegend

[Dylan]

42 minutes ago, misterlegend said:

I decided to take HexOS for a spin. I've got a couple of TrueNAS servers and know full well how challenging it can be. I was curious to see if HexOS is something I could setup for someone else w/o needing to be their forever tech support.

I put together this CWWK S11 NAS quickly when the sale went live.
It has an Intel N100, 32GB of DDR4, and an SK Hynix OEM 256GB OS drive.
For storage there are 4x Seagate Ironwolf Pros from a retired Plex NAS.

Installation was quite simple and went quickly. I did run into a hiccup with deck.hexos.com taking about 20 mins to see my NAS, but I just kinda went off to do something else and it was detected by the time I got back.
The promise of an offline interface is definitely the only reason I tried it. As long as that is 100% going to happen, I like what I see. It's pretty keen of the devs to make Immich first app they had ready in the beta. If you can make that painless, you've won. And it was painless. I was up and running and dumping images into it within minutes. Very much akin to grabbing an app from the QNAP or Synology store. Keep up the good work!

I purchased something SIMILAR and hope it's not as chintzy as you say your is...because they look similar. Hope it works out for you!

[misterlegend]

6 minutes ago, Dylan said:

I purchased something SIMILAR and hope it's not as chintzy as you say your is...because they look similar. Hope it works out for you!

That one looks a fair bit more substantial. Esp being an extruded aluminum shell. I liked the larger exhaust and CPU fans as well. It's what I was looking at first, but I was impatient lol.
I know it'll come to Amazon at some point, but it's not there yet. I tend to get them from Amazon since the return policy is bullet proof if something goes sideways in the first 30 days (or more since Christmas return window).

[Dylan]

6 minutes ago, misterlegend said:

That one looks a fair bit more substantial. Esp being an extruded aluminum shell. I liked the larger exhaust and CPU fans as well. It's what I was looking at first, but I was impatient lol.
I know it'll come to Amazon at some point, but it's not there yet. I tend to get them from Amazon since the return policy is bullet proof if something goes sideways in the first 30 days (or more since Christmas return window).

Yeah, I deff put the cost/benefit analysis to work on that chassis; N100, drives not hot-swappable but the rest of the build looked to fit my needs well - lots of good port options and even though only 2x2.5Gb NICs, that'll work for what I want to do. It'll sit it my bedroom so I need it low power and quiet fans. Fingers crossed.

[misterlegend]

6 minutes ago, Dylan said:

Yeah, I deff put the cost/benefit analysis to work on that chassis; N100, drives not hot-swappable but the rest of the build looked to fit my needs well - lots of good port options and even though only 2x2.5Gb NICs, that'll work for what I want to do. It'll sit it my bedroom so I need it low power and quiet fans. Fingers crossed.

o0o0o there's no eye-searing blue LEDs all over the WTR Pro.
That'll be nice for your planned bedroom use case.
The 120mm fan and easy access to the RAM & SSD are nice additions.
This one has a 92mm and it has a bit of a hum to it + non-standard power connector.

[Dylan]

32 minutes ago, misterlegend said:

o0o0o there's no eye-searing blue LEDs all over the WTR Pro.
That'll be nice for your planned bedroom use case.
The 120mm fan and easy access to the RAM & SSD are nice additions.
This one has a 92mm and it has a bit of a hum to it + non-standard power connector.

Almost identical builds. Funny. Hope you post your results especially as we move from beta to 1.0. I won't get mine for another week or two and even then just going to set it up with little no zero "real" storage data until I can prove the OS functionality. It's a great time to be an enthusiast!

[misterlegend]

On 12/7/2024 at 9:55 PM, Dylan said:

I purchased something SIMILAR and hope it's not as chintzy as you say your is...because they look similar. Hope it works out for you!

Now with 100% more Aoostor WTR Pro
I jumped ship lol.

The blue lights and build quality on the CWWK was just worlds apart.
Luckily, Amazon's return window was extra long, so I only had an hour of downtime while I swapped systems.

[Dylan]

@misterlegend - That's great! Do you think the Aoostar will better meet your needs? I finally got mine earlier this week and installed it today. Just going to run the basics and get a little familiarized with TrueNAS while the HexOS dev team continue to drive to 1.0

(great photos BTW!)

[misterlegend]

36 minutes ago, Dylan said:

Do you think the Aoostar will better meet your needs?

Yep, so far both drive and CPU temps are better. Also, the only visible LEDs (when you use the front cover) are network. I'll put it to you this way, the WTR Pro weights almost as much empty as the CWWK did with drives in it lol.

38 minutes ago, Dylan said:

I finally got mine earlier this week and installed it today. Just going to run the basics and get a little familiarized with TrueNAS while the HexOS dev team continue to drive to 1.0

Awesome! Good luck!

38 minutes ago, Dylan said:

(great photos BTW!)

Thanks!

[Dylan]

5 hours ago, misterlegend said:

Yep, so far both drive and CPU temps are better. Also, the only visible LEDs (when you use the front cover) are network. I'll put it to you this way, the WTR Pro weights almost as much empty as the CWWK did with drives in it lol.

Damn! And I remember that the pricing was more or less equivalent..

[misterlegend]

16 hours ago, Dylan said:

Damn! And I remember that the pricing was more or less equivalent..

Yeah. The CWWK came with memory and "storage" but it was a random letter generator SSD that I would not trust to have more that 5 read/write cycles before dying lol. Surprisingly the RAM was crucial, but I didn't need RAM. And taking it apart to replace the memory and storage was... interesting. The access door on the WTR makes a TON more sense.