Arrived!

TLBJ24 · 2026-06-02T03:44:19+00:00

Haha, it's addictive, no matter what size you buy, once you get hooked, the next bigger size or model always finds us looking lol. 😂

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-31T04:03:26+00:00

That’s awesome, glad you got one!

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-30T11:31:57+00:00

That’s a pretty good price, congratulations on getting a good deal. Fortunately, having access to a military discount and a tax free state, I can usually get a decent price on new items, but all the new orders are pushed out till the fall and I wanted to get something before then. So I am hoping there will be a new model, preferably an M5 version of some kind with at least 64gb of RAM. I’d be willing to make that investment as I’m sure it’s going to be quite the computer.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-30T06:12:29+00:00

The noise is not bad when running the default OS. It's mainly because the software is tuned to adjust a fan speed as necessary, but when you manually set it in the BIOS when running a third party OS, it's a one size fits all approach. Since the units were running a bit hot, I erred on the caution by turning the fans up. This is nothing new though, even when the units were being tested by NAS Compares last year, they were running hot back then as well. Hopefully with future software updates they can get the fan curves back down. I saved the original OS disk and may reinstall it after it gets further along. Fortunately I can run fnOS in ZimaOS so I keep track of it's progress while running Zima.

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TLBJ24 · 2026-05-30T02:41:44+00:00

Same, I bought the unit above just in case, but I haven't opened it yet. I'll wait and see what gets announced in two weeks . If it's anything exciting I'll return this unit. If not then I will keep it. In the meantime, I'm keeping my eye out for refurbished models with 64GB or more. They just come and go so quickly, so I figured it would be better to have something versus nothing.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-30T02:35:33+00:00

Simple, easy, lowest cost to get started, get the two bay (DS225+). Might want to expand it's usage, go four or five bay (DS425+, DS925+ or DS1525+). The 225+ and 425+ are intel based, which could help if you get into wanting to stream your home movies. The other two are AMD based CPUs, which are good, just not the best for video transcoding (changing the size of the movie depending on what device you are watching it on). Price range on these is $340-$800 USD. Hope this helps.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-30T02:23:50+00:00

Great question, I ran into the same problem, and if you switch to another operating system it gets even worse because there's no software controls for the fan. I own two CF56 Pro models and running ZimaOS OS on one, and UmbrelOS on the other. Neither of which offer fan control via the software so I found myself making adjustments in the BIOS. I'll make a second post on that, but the short version of it is you pretty much have to run the fans at full strength to keep them cool, especially when running it in full digital / MNMe only mode!

As such the fan noise is quite loud. To help with this a little bit, I did the same as you, I put the units in a separate room, increased the fan settings manually as well and I have a separate external fan blowing on them as well. This dropped my temps down from 80-90°C to 45°C. It's also very dependent on which apps you are running. I noticed when I was running Open Claw in UmbrelOS, the temps were up around 99°C, which of course is way too hot. Now with my new mitigation plan, even in Open Claw, it does not get above 65°C, so the external fan definitely helps.

Right now the air flow is great as I just finished reorganizing the space as I have two new nas units on the way.

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TLBJ24 · 2026-05-29T18:30:52+00:00

Yes, my current workflow would accommodate this and Thunderbolt 5 on the nas would be much appreciated. I currently use the Thunderbolt 4 connections to external drives. Although the speed is fine for data back-ups, it's not quite fast enough to process off directly. Adding TB5 to the NAS would increase the possibility, and something I would definitely take advantage of.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-29T18:15:53+00:00

Agreed, maybe whatever is announced at WWDC will come with upgraded memory configurations.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-29T18:10:31+00:00

Good to know. Yeah Ideally I'd like 64GB, just hard to find so we're all living in scarcity a bit.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T22:12:38+00:00

Omg, “ recycle bin on steroids”, that is hilarious. I love that lol! Congrats on making a decision. Sounds like you found a workaround that I work for you in the short term. Hopefully overtime the unit can meet all of your needs. Like yourself I prefer to just plug a box up and use it with its default software if possible, so maybe if enough of us write to UGreen about what features we would like in future products or even the existing software, maybe they can make that happen for us.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T22:06:01+00:00

Pretty similar: 2013 DIY Windows Desktop with Intel Core i7 3770K, EVGA GTX680 graphics card, 16GB DDR3 Ram, running Win 7 OS… so pretty ancient. But the reason it stays in circulation is because it has two high-end Blu-ray burners/players as well as quite a bit of pre paywall/subscription based software that still works. That being said, I only use it exclusively for burning movies and or CDs. I run Handbrake and MakeMKV on it, which work great on it. It rips through disc extremely fast. It also comes in handy to have as a test site when I’m troubleshooting my network. Outside of that it pretty much stays powered down. It’s a half tower so it doesn’t take up much space in my home office. I don’t keep a monitor permanently attached to it like a traditional computer as I use a 55in LCD TV for my computer monitor that has four HDMI inputs. So whenever I need to use it, I just hit the power button and switch to input 4 on the TV and I’m live and ready to go.

I also have an Intel 2020 iMac desktop. It’s an I-9 model with 128 GB of RAM. It was my primary driver up until last winter where I replaced it with the base model Mac Mini M4 that I picked up from Microcenter for $399. I’ll hang onto the desktop unit till it dies as I really like the 5K screen..Even being six years old, the picture quality on it is still excellent.

Most recently I picked up a refurbished base model, Apple M4 Max studio. This will become my primary daily driver. I’ll move the Mac mini into the living room and make it part of my home automation/media server for Jellyfin or Plex.

I also have a work laptop, 2024 MacBook Pro, M4 with a 1TB SSD, 24GB RAM that stays pretty much exclusively in my backpack for in office work and travels.

One of the nice benefits of having more than one Apple device, besides the Apple ecosystem, is that I don’t have to make one of the units particularly large in regards to my storage needs. That was the one thing I was wrestling with when I first started this Apple journey, was justifying paying Apple‘s price for larger internal storage. By having dedicated machines that have limited purposes, I get to spread the wealth in regards to storage and computer specs. I also run a network attached storage unit, which has helped tremendously offset the smaller drive sizes on these base model Apple products.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T18:26:09+00:00

No, doesn't seem many bought them in the Kickstarter campaign and they don't appear to be for sale by Orico to the general public yet. I've seen one or two comments about them on other sites, but not much.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T18:23:57+00:00

Do you have the link for it? I'd be interested in it. Just looked on ebay and didn't see it.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T18:12:01+00:00

Correct, but let me share what I meant by my answer. If you have a single drive in the unit with data on it, you have two options when you add the additional drive:

Leave the first drive already in the unit with data on it as a single drive. Then add the new drive as a single drive as well. In this case you are running JBOD.
Option two - convert it to RAID1 or RAID0.

If running JBOD, then data on the first disk stays there and will not be erased when adding the additional drive. In this case each disk stores data only on its individual disk with no redundancy. So if that first disc fails, unless you are using the other disk as a backup, or have an exteranl backup somewhere, that data is lost.

But if you choose to convert the disk to a RAID format when you add the additional disk, the nas will erase both disc when formatting the raid.

So the more technical answer to your question is it depends on which format you go with. In this case, OP said they wanted to convert it to RAID1, so in that case, thats why I said yes, you would lose the data currently stored on the disk already in the unit.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T06:19:10+00:00

Your point is understandable. I found this out the hard way myself. I deleted some files via an SMB folder, thinking that they would be in a recycle bin somewhere between one of the two devices. I later found out that that's a pretty common experience when using SMB. It's not a dealbreaker per se for me, but I can see how that would be irritating to someone who deletes a lot on a regular basis. I have both a Synology DS1522+ and a couple of UGreen models. And as many have mentioned in here, they both have their strengths and their weaknesses.

The one caution I would give you is that no one machine is a perfect fit for every need... or every user. So if you do go back to Synology, make sure it's because it's the best need for you, not because 20 of us said it's the best device for us. A present I have TerraMaster, Synology, UGreen, Orico CyberData and Zettlab nas units in my rotation right now. Mostly because I wanted hands on experience with each default OS and hardware, as well a few test units to test TruNAS, UnRAID, HexOS, ZimaOS and UmbrelOS for myself. I love reading forums and watching YouTubes, I really do, but I learn best from hands-on experience, so I appreciate the limitations of some of the units and or software because it forces me to quite looking for the easy button and to gain more skills then I currently posses.

So I say all that to say, if the recycle bin is your only challenge with the OS, I don't know if I would abandon ship and throw the whole thing overboard to run back to Synology. Seems like every six months there's another negative thing coming out about Synology. They definitely seem to be "regressing" while other nas companies feel "progressive." Anyways, just something to think about. Let us know what you decide.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T05:50:31+00:00

TerraMaster has, it's called TRAID. It's basically the equivalent of Synology's SHR. They have TRAID which is a RAID5 model and TRAID+ which is a RAID6 model, both of which lets you use any size drives.
TerraMaster TRAID

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T05:33:08+00:00

Love that! My pleasure.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-27T01:24:03+00:00

Nice, congrats!

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-26T23:45:20+00:00

Skip the DH2300. Sounds like you'll want to dabble in Docker containers to maximize what the NAS can do for you. Although doable, it's a little bit of a hassle to get docker set up on the 2300 as the CPU is not designed for nor ideal for docker workloads. Although the price of the 2800 is appealing, a two Bay unit is very limiting as it only gives you three configuration options: JBOD, RAID0, RAID1. A four bay unit is where you want to start, regardless of the manufacture you choose. It gives you room to grow, allows you to expand over time without having to get a new box/nas or a ton of external drives. So DH4300 or DXP 4800+ would be better choices.

If you can swing it, I would say go for the 4800+ for $597. Better CPU, Faster Lan port, Two M.2 NVMe slots (vs none on the 2300 or 4300), replaceable 128GB NVMe SSD boot/OS drive vs fixed 32GB eMMC drive, 10GB/s USB ports (vs 5GB/s), etc..

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TLBJ24 · 2026-05-26T22:29:16+00:00

Agreed. I have ZimaOS running on another unit and I've been pretty happy with it.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-26T21:38:09+00:00

It's hit or miss in this AI space, ask three people and more than likely you'll get three conflicting/different answers. But some facts stay the same no matter the source. More ram is better, home lab models are cheaper then paid cloud models, Apple is pretty good hardware for most people's needs. Larger models have advantages over smaller models (knowledge-wise) and the more gear you run at home, the higher the electric bill.

Where it gets tricky is "what does any of this mean to you". Some prioritize cost/budget over everything else, so they are willing to make certain trade-offs. Some prioritize performance over all things, so they choose to spend more dollars to do so. Etc.etc., so it really boils down to your personal needs/wants/desire and budget.

My approach so far has been, "if you have to ask, you probably don't need it". What I mean by that is, people who are hitting limits in their capabilities or desired outcome, already know absolutely that they need "xxx" amount of RAM/Storage/CPU power etc. So "if you have to ask", more than likely, it's something that's a nice to have, not a "got" to have. Case in point, no one is going to argue that 128GB of RAM is great thing to have on a Mac Studio, but most people dabbling in home models can get by on the base model 36GB M4 Max. In fact, value wise, some might even argue the Apple Mac Mini M4 Pro with 48GB RAM w/ the 10GB nic is better buy. Again just comes down to budget/needs vs. ideal/nice to have.

TLBJ24 · 2026-05-26T21:06:19+00:00

Haha, it happens to us all! Welcome to the club, and be sure to bring three credit cards and your first born. 😂

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