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PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

pibox.io

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Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#111

Post by danhor »

revolvingocelot wrote: post #76
paranoidrobot wrote: post #39

I'm looking for something like this, but cheaper and for 3.5" drives. USD$250, plus shipping to Australia puts that just too high for what it offers. I own Synology NASs, but adding an expander for that is expensive. (AUD$800) The ODroid-HC4 looks promising, but their 'toaster' case design for it is awful, leaving the drives exposed and unable to put two atop each other. Ideally what I'd like is: - 1-2x 3.5" SATA dri…

After further poking around, I see that if one ponies up one's email and follows the (surprisingly dark-patterned) [0] "Sign Up & Customize" button [1], one can see the whole catalogue of planned PiBox hardware. It looks like you'd want the currently-unreleased "Box 2" -- assuming you could swallow the presumably still unpalatable shipping charges. [0] OK, I get that these guys want to gauge interest as precisely as…

If you block scripts, the redirect doesn't happen. Very weird.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#112

Post by geerlingguy »

luke2m wrote: post #108
lostlogin wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Plex seems to be circling closer and closer to a bad place in their quest to be a media company. I’d love it if they focussed on improving the UI and sharing aspects rather than pushing their media and weird default requirement for internet access. I’d happily pay more for the path I want.

https://jellyfin.org/

This is what I use for my moderate sized media library, and it's great, also works with a variety of consumption apps.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#113

Post by ecksii »

This looks great as a portable NAS device. I could run it using Raspbian or whatever will run on the rpi. For me it would be perfect if there was a TrueNAS port to arm hardware that could run on the pi. As it is, I use a 2GB pi4 in an argon m.2 case as a traveling NAS. I run FreeBSD on that and it's not so much of a NAS as it is an NFS server.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#114

Post by citizenpaul »

anderspitman wrote: post #18

Interesting. Usually my critique for products like this is something along the lines of "great, but how are you going to access your data from the internet?" Typically the answer to that is you need some sort of tunneling service like ngrok to get around port forwarding, CGNAT, firewalls, etc. I maintain a list of solutions here[0]. The problem with most of these services is that they're targeted at developers and ar…

Perhaps im just a jerk but all im seeing here is a very expensive diskless nas case that i can already buy from aliexpress for an order of magnitude cheaper. I'd be glad if you could change my mind.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#115

Post by megous »

normaler wrote: post #80
megous wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

`cryptsetup benchmark` shows me ~400-500 MiB/s (per core) for aes-xts-256 on slower rk3566 I guess it will be similar for gcm

Are you running zfs native encryption and zfs mirror/RAID or luks + mdadm with zfs in top?

No, just showing output from a tool that uses kernel based HW accelerated primitives on the platform.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#116

Post by zohch »

citizenpaul wrote: post #114
anderspitman wrote: post #18

Interesting. Usually my critique for products like this is something along the lines of "great, but how are you going to access your data from the internet?" Typically the answer to that is you need some sort of tunneling service like ngrok to get around port forwarding, CGNAT, firewalls, etc. I maintain a list of solutions here[0]. The problem with most of these services is that they're targeted at developers and ar…

Perhaps im just a jerk but all im seeing here is a very expensive diskless nas case that i can already buy from aliexpress for an order of magnitude cheaper. I'd be glad if you could change my mind.

Would not mind a link to some examples, but I guess you are right. Though maybe total cost will be higher though I have not calculated so maybe not.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#117

Post by revolvingocelot »

kelnos wrote: post #84
revolvingocelot wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After further poking around, I see that if one ponies up one's email and follows the (surprisingly dark-patterned) [0] "Sign Up & Customize" button [1], one can see the whole catalogue of planned PiBox hardware. It looks like you'd want the currently-unreleased "Box 2" -- assuming you could swallow the presumably still unpalatable shipping charges. [0] OK, I get that these guys want to gauge interest as precisely as…

I think it's a little unfair to call this a dark pattern. There's no point in selecting product options if you're not going to give them your email (since nothing is actually available yet), and I think "Sign Up & Customize" is a pretty clear description of what's happening. It's pretty clear (to me, at least) that they're trying to see what people want (and even helpfully give the expected price points for the vario…

>I guess I just don't see what your objection is to their flow

...they're asking for my email in order to let me see the prices. Why do they need my email in order to let me see the prices? Answer: they don't. So, uh, why are they asking for it? I find this bonkers. There are all kinds of Hackers on this site; I consider myself a Computer subtype, but I suppose from the perspective of the Growth Hacker, this isn't strange at all.

>And honestly I see that as sorta worse: it feels dark-patterny to get people to engage with you (in this case, by putting the various hardware option selections first), and then after they've invested the time, require an email address to make that time worthwhile

Question, would you engage in business with a physical store that made you provide ID (or even just an email) before letting you see how much things cost? Personally I go to the liquor store, select some liquor based on price and whimsy, and then I show them my ID to complete the flow. Placing roadblocks in the path of that flow -- I can't see the price without ID, and I can't just whimsically browse the shelves if I have to signal my intent to be there by digging out my ID before I enter -- seems like a bad idea.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#118

Post by revolvingocelot »

paranoidrobot wrote: post #82
revolvingocelot wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

After further poking around, I see that if one ponies up one's email and follows the (surprisingly dark-patterned) [0] "Sign Up & Customize" button [1], one can see the whole catalogue of planned PiBox hardware. It looks like you'd want the currently-unreleased "Box 2" -- assuming you could swallow the presumably still unpalatable shipping charges. [0] OK, I get that these guys want to gauge interest as precisely as…

Yeah I saw their 3.5" variant that's coming soon, but assuming it's prices only slightly higher than the 2.5" variant (keeping in mind it'd need a different power supply setup) it's still too expensive IMO. It's edging into the price range of other commercially available NASs for less performance.

Fair enough. I figure one of the things that I'm paying for is a non-wack firmware/OS in dedicated NAS hardware; it's less about performance for me (I could just use an old computer!) and more about power usage, form factor, and supporting general-purpose-computing-that-just-happens-to-be-running-a-NAS.

Re: PiBox Mini – Modular Raspberry Pi Storage Server

#120

Post by sliken »

citizenpaul wrote: post #114
anderspitman wrote: post #18

Interesting. Usually my critique for products like this is something along the lines of "great, but how are you going to access your data from the internet?" Typically the answer to that is you need some sort of tunneling service like ngrok to get around port forwarding, CGNAT, firewalls, etc. I maintain a list of solutions here[0]. The problem with most of these services is that they're targeted at developers and ar…

Perhaps im just a jerk but all im seeing here is a very expensive diskless nas case that i can already buy from aliexpress for an order of magnitude cheaper. I'd be glad if you could change my mind.

I've tinkered with cheap nas cases. It's easy to end up with a case that: so thin/flimsy that it rattles, crappy plastic carriers that seem designed for 3 insert/removals before dying, terrible airflow, and/or loud.

There are exceptions of course, but it's not an easy task to find a nice solution that is quiet, vibration damped (easier on spinning disks), good airflow (keep drives cool), nice mini-itx or similar motherboard (ideally with ECC), an expansion port (10G or M.2/U2 cache), etc.

One I've had my eye on is the Fractal Design Node 304.

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