NAS built in 2015? No, SFF instead!

[ulfn]

Now it’s time to attach the heatdissipating sheets to the four raised sections of the top lid, as I’ve called it, or cover maybe. They obviously meet and make contact with the four NVMe drives. I had no instructions about how to do this, so just went by feel. It looked like four sections, but they didn’t separate easily. A pair of scissors got the job done.

Edited April 6 by ulfn

[ulfn]

I first pulled off the transparent plastic protection. They  I pressed one finger over the blue protective layer, before removing this from the sheet.

Edited April 6 by ulfn

[ulfn]

All four done 😀

[ulfn]

When this Pocket NAS is ready for duty I intend to put it on four damping feet, to gain some extra height for more air to pass under the aluminium box. This to further help in heat dissipation. And they are so inconspicuous, as to be almost invisible, right 😉 Another reason is, I want to reduce potential vibration noice from the hidden fan inside, if that would rev up. These feet I borrowed from my HiFi nerd side, they are used for like CD-players or other ”boxes”with a weight between 2-5 kg. The green color is specific for this weight. My Pocket NAS is about 1,2 kg, but this would have to do. Now I must take a little break from this project for a couple of days. Over and out.

Edited April 6 by ulfn

[ulfn]

So, reality gave me a moment to verify my drives. A live session of GParted gave this result. All drives are ready for action. My four NVMe drives are there, sda is the SSD chip I installed a couple of days ago, and sdb is the USB stick with GParted.  Hooray 😀

Edited April 7 by ulfn
Polishing my English.

[ulfn]

For those who might wonder about the external fan on the Pocket NAS, here’s a picture for you. On the ipc.net site where I got it, they say it’s optional, but I got one with my delivery. I don’t know if that was a temporary offer, though. I intend to begin with no external fan attached, relying on the internal fan for temperature control. Only if necessary I would use the extra fan,  For a cleaner look, if nothing else.

[ulfn]

On 4/7/2025 at 6:13 PM, ulfn said:

So, reality gave me a moment to verify my drives. A live session of GParted gave this result. All drives are ready for action. My four NVMe drives are there, sda is the SSD chip I installed a couple of days ago, and sdb is the USB stick with GParted.  Hooray 😀

So, when I connected the Pocket NAS for this Dr.Parted live session, I noticed the outer part of the power button was missing. I had a little plastic ”thingy” I could use to get it going anyway. After I was done with this I contacted Jessica Fang at ipc.net support about my problem. We agreed about them sending me a replacement, and an extra spare one, and that I pay for shipping. That’s only fair I think. I couldn’t honestly say I did nothing to cause this problem, since I never noticed it falling off. The most economical shipping was $6 and that I paid through PayPal. 

Edited April 11 by ulfn
Polishing my English

[ulfn]

30 minutes ago, ulfn said:

So, when I connected the Pocket NAS for this Dr.Parted live session, I noticed the outer part of the power button was missing. I had a little plastic ”thingy” I could use to get it going anyway. After I was done with this I contacted Jessica Fang at ipc.net support about my problem. We agreed about them sending me a replacement, and an extra spare one, and that I pay for shipping. That’s only fair I think. I couldn’t honestly say I did nothing to cause this problem, since I never noticed it falling off. The most economical shipping was $6 and that I paid through PayPal. 

Sorry, the early morning hour isn’t helpful for writing posts. What I meant to say was I paid for shipping only. Over and out for now.

Edited April 11 by ulfn

[ulfn]

Finally it’s time to care about HexOS itself, not just the HW side of things. Booting from USB is already ok since my recent Dr.Parted Live session, and the key is ready after a meeting with Balena Etcher.

Edited Saturday at 04:54 PM by ulfn

[ulfn]

My chip only SSD is the chosen drive for HexOS.

[ulfn]

Current events. I’m not really ready to start using HexOS yet, so if this looking for servers takes time, I don’t really mind. I’m on my way, anyway.

Edited Saturday at 05:15 PM by ulfn

[ulfn]

There we go 😀  When I built my old NAS in 2015 I always had RAID10 in mind. As far as I’ve understood ZFS terminology, RAID-Z2 is the equivalent of RAID10. I would like to experiment with that quite soon, even if HexOS itself isn’t ready for it. Think I need to study some How-to’s online before I do, though. Ergo, I pause here, for now.

Edited Saturday at 05:57 PM by ulfn
Polishing my English

[Sonic]

4 minutes ago, ulfn said:

There we go 😀  When I built my old NAS in 2015 I always had RAID10 in mind. As far as I’ve understood ZFS terminology, RAID-Z2 is the equivalent of RAID10. I would like to experiment with that quite soon, even if HexOS itself isn’t ready for that. Think I need to study some How-to’s online before I do, though. 

RAID-Z2 is more or less the equivalent of RAID6

[Sonic]

BTW, If you want to use RAIDZ2, then you need to use the TrueNas interface . HexOs only can create a mirror or RaidZ1. RaidZ2 support is on the HexOs roadmap.

If you do a search in this forum on RaidZ2, you will find some guidance.

[ulfn]

9 minutes ago, Sonic said:

BTW, If you want to use RAIDZ2, then you need to use the TrueNas interface . HexOs only can create a mirror or RaidZ1. RaidZ2 support is on the HexOs roadmap.

If you do a search in this forum on RaidZ2, you will find some guidance.

TrueNAS interface was the thing I would need how-to’s for, yes. 😉

[ulfn]

On 4/3/2025 at 3:25 PM, ulfn said:

This screw I needed I couldn’t find in my own town. Internet shopping was my choice, so I ordered it, minimum order was for 10 of them. But what do you do!? So would this M2.5x4 screw fit? I had no way of knowing until I got it in my hand. So while I was preparing today’s ration of posts - I got it from the postman! Of course I had to try it immediately. It worked 😀  What’s left now, is where do I connect this SATA cable on the motherboard? There’s no obvious answer, I would have to contact the support team again.! That would be for another day.

When I sent a question to ipc.net support (Jessica Fang) earlier, I at the same time talked about the M2.5x4 screw useful for attaching this SSD chip, at the lower right side. I asked if they could possibly include it in the package when shipping this Pocket NAS. I had to order 10 of them for myself, and only really need the one. Kind of unnecessary... Anyway, they asked me to verify it was this screw I talked about. I don't know if this means it really will be included in the future, but as I told Jessica it would be beneficial for future customers. I'm just happy they are considering it.

[ulfn]

As I said yesterday I always planned on using RAID10 for my old NAS build from 2015. My assumption about RAID-Z2 being the ZFS equivalent of RAID10 was corrected by @Sonic ”RAID-Z2 is more or less the equivalent of RAID6”. Now, with my limited knowledge of RAID and/or ZFS I was always fond of the idea of using RAID10. Especially after I sent a question to a Swedish computer magazine years ago, about hard drives for a NAS and talked about my idea of RAID10. ”That’s what I’m using” was the answer I got from the person at the magazine.

[ulfn]

Now, RAID-Z2 is the talk of the town, in this community, I feel. I’m however not the person that does what ”Svensson” does, as we say in my country. In English it would probably be ”I don’t do what Mr Jones does”. It wouldn’t hurt with another use case, where I’m trying to implement the equivalent of of RAID10 in a ZFS setting. Like a ”striped mirror” or so. I found a TrueNAS forum post explaining about this. After spotting some post online I did exactly as the person asking the question in my linked post did, which was corrected by another member:   https://www.truenas.com/community/threads/how-to-set-up-4-disks-with-2-striped-and-then-mirrored.7956/

Member Stephan Hochhaus: ”First I created a volume with two drives and selected mirrored, then I extended the volume with two disks and selected striped. Is that the proper way to do it?”  This was answered by member paleoN: ”No, select mirror the second time as well. This will create your striped mirrors.”

[ulfn]

So, when I did it the correct way it looked this in TrueNAS interface. Now, remember I’m not the expert here. I rely on other knowledgeable persons. If what I’m doing is completely wrong, I hope someone will tell me 😉 Anyway, I’m not doing all this with critical data. For now I’m only playing a little.  I would only work with disposable files at this stage. I still need to catch up on static IP address for the server, and other things, like backup of OS disk and storage. Life is fun 😉

[ulfn]

Here’s the TrueNAS dashboard with respectable CPU temperatures, though my NVMe drives aren’t working much yet. When they are fully engaged temperature might rise.

[Sonic]

1 hour ago, ulfn said:

So, when I did it the correct way it looked this in TrueNAS interface. Now, remember I’m not the expert here. I rely on other knowledgeable persons. If what I’m doing is completely wrong, I hope someone will tell me 😉 Anyway, I’m not doing all this with critical data. For now I’m only playing a little.  I would only work with disposable files at this stage. I still need to catch up on static IP address for the server, and other things, like backup of OS disk and storage. Life is fun 😉

I am also not a ZFS expert, but I think you created striped mirrors. Since you are playing a little, you can always test the robustness of your setup by removing 1 or 2 SSDs and see what happens

[Sonic]

2 hours ago, ulfn said:

As I said yesterday I always planned on using RAID10 for my old NAS build from 2015. My assumption about RAID-Z2 being the ZFS equivalent of RAID10 was corrected by @Sonic ”RAID-Z2 is more or less the equivalent of RAID6”. Now, with my limited knowledge of RAID and/or ZFS I was always fond of the idea of using RAID10. Especially after I sent a question to a Swedish computer magazine years ago, about hard drives for a NAS and talked about my idea of RAID10. ”That’s what I’m using” was the answer I got from the person at the magazine.

I really have to do a deep dive in ZFS. I have learned in several forums that in specific cases RaidZ1 is more safe compared to RaidZ2. But a don't know in which cases and why. Still learning

[ulfn]

14 minutes ago, Sonic said:

I really have to do a deep dive in ZFS. I have learned in several forums that in specific cases RaidZ1 is more safe compared to RaidZ2. But a don't know in which cases and why. Still learning

I’ve also read in this forum that there’s an idea that maybe RAID-Z1 is better for Svensson/Mr Jones. He who lives will see 😉

Edited Sunday at 06:29 PM by ulfn
Polishing my English

[ulfn]

I ordered this memory module today. To have as a spare, or upgrade if I feel like it. The Pocket NAS can use up to 48GB RAM. Currently it’s 32GB.

Edited Monday at 01:43 PM by ulfn

[ulfn]

So @Dylan you said a while ago ”Looking forward to see and hearing about it when you've got it all up and running.”. Well since last weekend I’m running HexOS on my Pocket NAS. I’ve just now realized I would have to catch up on smb shares though, to make it really work. So far no files on my NAS, just running ”empty”. If those cables were tidied up a bit it could well be sitting there in my hallway for good.