I bought a U-Nas case a while ago. Just a small NAS-style PC case with eight 3.5" disk bays. I built it up and played around with it, but never put it into service in my homelab. It just sat there (off) with Truenas or something on it for testing. Well, it was a good thing I never did anything with it as I needed it the day my Synology died last year. It was a DS1518+ on (a lot of) borrowed time having lasted nine years. I mentally toyed with buying a new NAS, but the idea of spending a few thousand dollars didn’t excite me (or the wife).
So, I loaded up Xpenology on a thumb drive and plugged it into my U-Nas. It did not take me long to see how easy this was to load up a Synology DSM and hit the ground running. Then, once I loaded all my disks in, it saw everything and asked if I wanted to upgrade the OS. Sure, why not?
So, all data intact and running a mostly generic set of hardware as a Synology only a couple of days later. Zero extra cost for me as I already had everything. But you can do this too with hardware you might have laying about. I highly recommend it.
Do you like the U-Nas? I had an 810a (I think thad was the model) and found it way too restrictive in terms of size.
The PCIE slot also needed a riser cable since the card has to be parallel with the motherboard, the cable blocked about 1/3 of the CPU fan. I had a pcie card since it was an HBA
That looks like the one I am using. I bought a tiny motherboard that had the newer Supermicro Optilink connections. This allowed for all eight bays to be used with smaller cables that helped airflow and it had one onboard M.2 slot that I am using as cache. I did also put the PCI-E ribbon cable in to use with a 10Gb card, but I should pull that out as it’s only using the 1Gb link where it sits.
I don’t recall where, but there was a whole buildout of this Unas case on some blog linked from reddit years ago and I just followed that except for changing the motherboard. The parts I swapped in did better on the build than the blog version. They had to trim things to make it all fit. I didn’t have to do anything like that. It just worked.
All in all, a very nice NAS package that has the same footprint as the Synology.
Yeah I really liked the case, in theory. And I’m really happy you like it. I did have to trim the case as well. I swapped out for a Fractal Design Node 804. Definitely bigger, but I like it a lot more
I’m still running my DS1812+, she’s purring along with no signs of distress. 😅 I have another DS1515+ that I recently added and the difference in speed/responsiveness in the DSM OS is night and day. So the older DS1812+ is now mostly for long term storage.
Looks like I’ll have to treat my current Synology like I treat my Brother printer. Reverently.
I bought a U-Nas case a while ago. Just a small NAS-style PC case with eight 3.5" disk bays. I built it up and played around with it, but never put it into service in my homelab. It just sat there (off) with Truenas or something on it for testing. Well, it was a good thing I never did anything with it as I needed it the day my Synology died last year. It was a DS1518+ on (a lot of) borrowed time having lasted nine years. I mentally toyed with buying a new NAS, but the idea of spending a few thousand dollars didn’t excite me (or the wife).
So, I loaded up Xpenology on a thumb drive and plugged it into my U-Nas. It did not take me long to see how easy this was to load up a Synology DSM and hit the ground running. Then, once I loaded all my disks in, it saw everything and asked if I wanted to upgrade the OS. Sure, why not?
So, all data intact and running a mostly generic set of hardware as a Synology only a couple of days later. Zero extra cost for me as I already had everything. But you can do this too with hardware you might have laying about. I highly recommend it.
Do you like the U-Nas? I had an 810a (I think thad was the model) and found it way too restrictive in terms of size.
The PCIE slot also needed a riser cable since the card has to be parallel with the motherboard, the cable blocked about 1/3 of the CPU fan. I had a pcie card since it was an HBA
That looks like the one I am using. I bought a tiny motherboard that had the newer Supermicro Optilink connections. This allowed for all eight bays to be used with smaller cables that helped airflow and it had one onboard M.2 slot that I am using as cache. I did also put the PCI-E ribbon cable in to use with a 10Gb card, but I should pull that out as it’s only using the 1Gb link where it sits.
I don’t recall where, but there was a whole buildout of this Unas case on some blog linked from reddit years ago and I just followed that except for changing the motherboard. The parts I swapped in did better on the build than the blog version. They had to trim things to make it all fit. I didn’t have to do anything like that. It just worked.
All in all, a very nice NAS package that has the same footprint as the Synology.
Yeah I really liked the case, in theory. And I’m really happy you like it. I did have to trim the case as well. I swapped out for a Fractal Design Node 804. Definitely bigger, but I like it a lot more
DS416 nervously blinks in the corner
Don’t you dare.
DS213 … 😰
But why are the bays so expensive?! (A 6 bay is like almost six times a one bay)
I’m still running my DS1812+, she’s purring along with no signs of distress. 😅 I have another DS1515+ that I recently added and the difference in speed/responsiveness in the DSM OS is night and day. So the older DS1812+ is now mostly for long term storage.
Nice! I’ll keep this in mind!
oh no what did brother do