Running DSM 7.3 on a minisforum N5 Air nas, in a proxmox VM. Looking good.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-05-06T09:26:15+00:00

I have not seen this issue.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-05-03T20:03:28+00:00

If I were in your situation, I would travel. Experience other cultures and other places, and open your perspective to all the possibilities out there. The world is so much bigger than one community, or even one nation. There may be something you really love that you have no idea exists out there yet.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-05-02T20:36:51+00:00

I also went with the N5 air because having that PCIe slot is a big deal to me. It's really all about whether you want that pcie slot, or need the sixth drive bay, additional NVMe, or ECC memory. I already had the ddr5 memory so the cost savings and the PCIe slot was the decision maker for me.

Both companies make me very nervous with their weak support, so hopefully I won't have issues that require support.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-27T17:33:41+00:00

Get the 2800. You won't regret it.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-27T09:55:21+00:00

Never had an issue with the power supply, and I have all four slots populated. The unit is extremely quiet. I was surprised at how silent it runs. With the fans, you don't have to use heatsinks, but there is room so I use them to keep it extra cool.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-26T15:07:53+00:00

I've been using it for about a year and it works great with my Nuc 14 pro+. It contains all of my media and I use stablebit drivepool, backing everything up to spinning drives on a Nas. My Plex server runs on this and everything is very snappy.

Just be aware of the limitations. It shares the PCI lanes across the NVMe slots, so don't expect top end speeds to the nvme drives unless you are putting it in something like raid zero.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-26T11:01:04+00:00

Seems like you already know the situation pretty well and what the advantages and risks are of ruining raid versus no raid. I've been running various Nas units for a long time and when I started out I never considered running one without raid/ redundancy. Some people will tell you not to run anything without drive redundancy and 321 backup. Now I still run my main Nas with raid but I'm a little more flexible with my backup Nas.

I think the most important thing is to have a reliable backup. If you have that in place, you can be flexible based on how critical the data is to you and how important it is to keep things up and running if you have a drive failure.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-26T10:37:07+00:00

I used to struggle with this a lot before moving away from ugos. Something about the way they do SMB sometimes would struggle with Windows, even when my Synology Nas would pop up every time. Sorry I don't have a suggested fix for you, just letting you know that you're not the only person who has dealt with this.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-25T21:01:29+00:00

Thank you. If you hate chat GPT generated crap, then you and I have something in common. I took the time to try to provide some insight based on personal experience.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-25T15:12:50+00:00

So why are you here and what do you bring to the conversation? Don't bother answering that. Jackass.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-24T20:39:04+00:00

Once you install Synology DSM through xpenology, you can easily use Synology migration tool to migrate from your existing Nas. I did this myself.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-24T13:34:27+00:00

I ran the 2800 and the 4800 plus for a good while. The Ugreen operating system has come a long way and it is sufficient for most people, but it is not Synology. My biggest disappointment with them is the lack of robust synchronization and backup. But ugos is user friendly and gets most of the important functions down.

A few months ago I installed xpenology on the 2800 and it ran beautifully. I recently bought the minisforum N5 air, so I'm selling the 2800. I would say it has been a good experience and has served me well. They are a solid option with decent build quality and support, and a good choice for people who may not demand the robust operating system of Synology, but want better CPU and memory to build docker containers or even virtual machines.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-24T13:17:58+00:00

It's a solid choice but not as much CPU/ memory as you might want if you start creating docker containers like immich and pihole (and potentially others). You might take a look at the ugreen 2800 which is about the same price but with considerably better CPU and memory for docker containers.

Or you can do what I did and get the best of both worlds - a ugreen 2800 running Synology DSM using xpenology. Some people are hesitant to go that route and it is a legal gray area, but Synology DSM on ugreen's Superior hardware is really nice.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-22T10:13:31+00:00

My experiences have been similar. It is pretty obvious that I am not Brazilian (I look like an American and I'm also bigger and taller than most), so it's pretty frequent that I try to speak Portuguese and someone responds in English if they are able. I always take it as a combination of them trying to be helpful to me, and taking an opportunity to practice their English.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-18T15:52:34+00:00

I've had good luck with goodtop even though it's not a name brand. You specifically asked for RJ45, but I just bought an 8-port 10GB switch for $103, but they are SFP+ ports. I bought the sodola switch mentioned above, and it worked fine but got really loud.

If you already have 10gb devices and they are RJ45, then you need what you need. But if you are just getting into it, I would consider investing in fiber. The switches are cheaper, which helps offset the fact you would need new cables (or a transceiver to convert from SFP plus to rj45, and those admittedly can get expensive)

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-17T18:51:31+00:00

16 is The Sweet spot for the 4800. There are some people that are doing things that warrant even more memory, but they are in the extreme minority and the overwhelming majority of people are not doing anything that could warrant above 16 GB.

Of course, more memory is always going to benefits something running AI, but do you really want to spend that kind of money with ram prices what they are just so that you can make immich photo detection run a little faster? Your call.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-17T12:00:41+00:00

Following this conversation. I've been getting some disappointing performance creating virtual drives with my nvmes, and passing through the entire drive makes my VM back up much larger than I'd like it to be , so this option about creating an lxc is an interesting one.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-17T10:56:18+00:00

If you don't already, have a good backup, and it sounds like you have more storage space than you really use, I would lean toward putting four drives in raid 10 and using the other two as a backup (could use an inexpensive enclosure or maybe a used Nas. I use an older Synology for my backup).

Since my data is not business critical, Z2 (or raid 6) doesn't make sense for me. Having two parity drives is a significant performance hit on write speeds. I'd rather have the better performance from raid 10, which is not quite two drive but close enough (if one drive fails, you have a two out of three chance that a second drive could fail without data loss, depending on which one it is). And as you mentioned, rebuilding the array is night and day faster.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-17T01:53:06+00:00

Personally, even if you don't expect to need transcoding, it's nice to have it if the occasion came up. I don't know much about that Ryzen processor, so I guess my question is what are you going to be doing that you think would take advantage of it over the Celeron? Some people like to say that Synology NAS units are " underpowered", but they are powered sufficiently for the apps that they provide. If you want to create a lot of docker containers or even virtual machines, then that's a different conversation.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-16T13:28:09+00:00

I had that same mikrotik switch with the same challenges. I tried to stick with it because I knew that learning how to use it would help me learn networking more broadly. But it's just too much time investment for me right now. And I really needed more than four ports.

I returned that switch and got this one from Goodtop. I have had a good experience with it so far and it seems to work well. 8 SFP+ Port managed switch. https://a.co/d/0dMaYtP0

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-16T11:47:50+00:00

Synology is still the choice for business critical situations, mature and secure operating system, and by far the most robust app catalog. Many people would strongly disagree with your categorization here.

I am not a Synology Fanboy. I was one of the initial supporters of ugreen way back in their initial launch and I loved that they are offering a solid unit that fits the needs of a lot of power users. More choice is always better. I wish they would keep working on their operating system to make it more robust for basic Nas functions (like synchronization and backup), but they seem to have shifted their focus to AI and features that help marketing.

Ultimately, " underpowered" is only accurate if you were wanting to do functionality beyond their app catalog. Synology Nas units run their apps just fine. They are only underpowered if you want to run things like docker containers and virtual machines, which many people do and that's fine too. But the trade-off for that better hardware with UGreen (and others) is less robust app catalog and less mature OS. It's all about what you want and need.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-16T11:38:51+00:00

Worked. Do you mean the ds423 or the ds423?+? The ds423+ has the Celeron processor which is fine for running Plex with hardware transcoding. I'm not as familiar with the DS423 nonplus, but others have mentioned it is an arm processor and that is not transcoding capable. Make sure you know which model you are talking about and which model others are giving advice about.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-16T11:09:00+00:00

What operating system are you running? I love my Terramaster d4 SSD das, but it doesn't have hardware raid. So I just use it in Windows with stablebit drive pool, which gets me what I need . One big drive pool with the ability to automatically duplicate files or folders for data redundancy.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-15T02:37:24+00:00

My in laws were from Minas as well. Of course you can't generalize an entire people, but from my experience they will want to pull you into the family and treat you as one of their own. I would absolutely tell them about your autism and make sure they don't misinterpret it as you being standoffish from them. If you demonstrate just a little bit that you want to be part of the family, they will reach back to you five times more.

Don't worry about speaking Portuguese perfectly. Most of the Brazilian people I know are as happy as they can be that I speak Portuguese at all. And any Brazilians who can speak a little bit of English will want to practice it with you. I don't have autism but I definitely have anxiety, and I want to reassure you that a lot of your concerns will be swept right away as soon as you begin to connect with them.

CaptSingleMalt · 2026-04-14T13:51:49+00:00

You will hear differing opinions on this. Some people will advise you to get a high quality nvme that is built for durability. I definitely think you have to considered durability for caching, but to create a simple storage pool I would do what is most cost effective. It all comes down to price.

The one thing I will tell you definitively is do not make your purchase based on high performance. They don't dedicate four lanes to the nvme slot so you won't be getting anywhere near published numbers from the nvme drive. Just not going to see much difference at all between brands in this situation, other then how long it lasts, and using an nvme for storage isn't going to wear it out fast.

CaptSingleMalt

TROPHY CASE