This 13-Year-Old NAS Is SHOCKINGLY Still Useable
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Also thanks to @RaidOwl for sending this over!
► Checkout items I used (affiliate links):
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🛍️ USB to TTL Serial Adapter - amzn.to/3PvfvzL
► Links to articles/guides/forum posts I used in this project (not all, but most of the ones I found to be helpful):
- wiki.edgarbv.com/index.php/Ne...
- blah.cloud/miscellaneous/upgr...
- github.com/ChrisCarini/netgea...
- nerdyness2012.wordpress.com/t...
- community.netgear.com/t5/Usin...
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Music (in order):
"Hardware Haven Theme" -Me ( • Hardware Haven Theme M... )
"CRENSHAW VIBES" - GARRISON ( / garrison-brown )
"If You Want To" - Me
"Sunshower" - LATASHÁ( / best-music-pro.. )
"The Butterfly Nose" - GARRISON
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🎥 Curious About the equipment I use to make my videos?
Click Here ► hardwarehaven.media/gear
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Timestamps:
0:00 this NAS is old
0:40 Thanks to my RAID Members!
1:05 The ReadyNAS Pro 2
2:35 Specs
3:22 Turning it on and factory reset
4:00 First issues...
4:50 Fixing SMB
5:42 Power Draw
6:12 Teardown and memory upgrade
7:22 Upgrading the software
10:19 Installing a 3rd party OS
14:31 This NAS is still useable!
Aplards channel is worth checking out. I like both yours and Aplards because of the trying to make old hardware work.
Agreed!
Agreed. He does some interesting stuff. Just be prepared to be proselytized to of the divinity and glory of IPv6. He's dragging a class of nerds into the networking future (present).
Aplards
I had the same excitment when I realized ReadyNAS 4200 is "just" a Supermicro Server. Now it has 24 GB RAM, 10GbE NIC and happily servers as an archive for video footage.
That thing must be a bit power hungry and slow compared to modern consumer hardware!
We have this NAS at work. It was forgotten and buried in a corner for 7 years. In fact, I had to look for it, based on the mystery share on the network. I relegated it to 3rd backup location but it's still perfectly usable. It's on its 3rd set of drives and refuses to die.
What drives do you use? If it's a 3rd set in 7 years I guess it's Seagate.
@@MW-te5fv No, it's the 3rd set in 13 years. Don't know the first set - only that they were 512G. Someone replaced them with bigger Seagate drives and forgot it for 7 years. Then I "excavated" this relic and replaced the Seagate set with a new, bigger WD set. None of the drives have failed, they either became obsolete or worked for 5-7 years.
is it at least using SMBv3 👀
@@SZF123456 Pffffffffftt, I need to enable V1 on every device from the optional feature on any device that needs access.
@@tenekeviI might just print this comment out and have a look at it every time I think we have half-assed sth at work
Regarding the RAM: you gotta use older type DDR3 4GB SO DIMM modules with 8 chips on each side (2Rx8) - that should work. These old CPUs often don't support the newer type modules with fewer chips on them.
Interesting, I'll have to pocket this info haha
that should do it, I've upgraded my EeePC 1215N which uses a D525 to 8GB (2*4GB) back in the days
yeah, the one that using PC10600 standard instead the one that using PC12800
And I found dual rank ram gives me slightly better performance ..
its always a safe bet to have a spare ddrl3 1333mhz ram at hand for testing since this type of ram usually works universally on any ddr3 motherboards.
"I found out NetGear made a NAS." I was surprised to find out that NetGear apparently no longer makes NASs.
Your tenacity with this old hardware is something I appreciate. Most folks give up if something is slightly out of date but I love seeing old hardware keep running as long as it's still functional. Thank you!
2:37 2C/4T
it seemed odd for an atom to have 4 cores
Yep, my bad. Thanks!
@@s1mple_minded Atom of that age for sure
@@HardwareHaven All good, no worries The video was very enjoyable and very easy to understand for someone like myself who has very basic knowledge about NASs and Linux based OSs
I found my first NAS in a moving box a couple of months ago. Turns out there are people developing new firmware for my 15 year old Dlink DNS 323 with 64MB of memory. It can apparently still be used as a backup target when using this firmware. So I added it to my project list for a rainy day :)
As Debian updates failed due to low memory on the DNS323, i have ALT-F running. I did the serial connector with an old Samsung USB-to-Serial Connector out of curiosity...
Hey man, just wanna say that the progress you're making on KZhead is great. I genuinely enjoy your content. It's not easy jumping into tech tube and you've done a great job. You stand out the things you do are different and you're humble. Keep it up man!
I appreciate that more than you know! Thanks
This video is the best. I get really excited when old embedded like devices running linux are updated and made useful again! The process of figuring out how to get a serial console or ssh connection to an embedded device and hack around in it's filesystem to update/customize it to do something useful in the modern day is always super exciting to me. I have messed around with countless old tv boxes running various embedded cpus and custom built (usualy ancient kernel 2.6) linuxes. Thank you for going through to the end and not stopping at updating the stock firmware past the default max, but going as far as figuring pout how to install any old linux os on it!
I did basically this with an old QNAP NAS and Unraid. It ran fine but not enough for me to wait to keep it in my network. It was a fun project, though!
Great Video! I once went down a similar rabbit hole during the Seagate FreeAgent DockStar era, where there was an entire community of people dedicated to running Arch Linux on a family of devices running on a Marvell Armada ARM cpu and 256MB or RAM, one of which was this tiny dock with an ethernet port and some USB ports That thing helped me get familiar with Linux while download Linux ISO's for many many years!
The debian community for that hardware is still alive, in Doozan forums there is still a developer maintaining a debian kernel and image. Also a lot of those are now supported by OpenWrt too
Thanks as always for compiling these adventures. Looking forward to the next old tech revival video!
Honestly - this was awesome! I applaud you're not giving up - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have taken it *quite* so far myself - but I'm glad you did. Tinkering (especially with older hardware) is usually equal amounts of fun - and frustration. Well done!
I have a ReadyNAS 102 still works great
I bought one of those used on eBay when I had just started to work, I seriously Hated it with a passion, it did lead me to try and build my own. But your video has me curious to go dig it out my old room and see what miracles can be performed. Thanks for the vid.
Upgrade CPU.
@@brodriguez11000 it's soldered
@@marcogenovesi8570 Anything can be un-soldered, cleaned, and something else/faster put in it's spot. Limitation is that Atom CPU socket. Had it something else, even an Intel Core M or something, would be better because the contact pads would be different supporting different CPU's.
@@jaywhite15_ALlol how many large bga parts have you reballed and replaced? You know this is not something most people can do
@@marcogenovesi8570 quite a few including my latest, Alder Lake P. Stencils, flux, a heat gun, and non-leaded soldering paste and you're in it. It's also not a hard thing to learn. Grab a few old things like an old laptop and practice a little and you'll be very very surprised at what all you can do if you just try it. It's not like I have a semiconductor-fab in my back yard. Anyone can do this stuff. Just remember patience is a virtue.
I literally have one of this sitting on my desk. Definitely gonna update it with your tips. Thanks!
I had a client that had a set of these for their server backup repositories, and they were a PITA to support, update and obtain parts for. The models I had required netgear flashed hard drives for use, up until the last firmware update where they opened it up for some manufacturers. They sucked and I was glad to see them get recycling after a power outage and subsequent power surge that broke something
the full send yolo debian update. nice.
My dad is still running a DS213 and an DS210 for over 10 years without ever having to touch them. We replaced one of the 213's 2tb wd red drives with an 8tb wd red plus drive, which is still initializing at the moment but seems to be functional at its full 8tb capacity despite synology only validating this model for up to 4tb drives.
Thanks for the duster recommendation Was looking for one for a few weeks
Took those serial connectors by the horns . . . Chapeau! 👍💯👏 Kindest regards, friends and neighbours.
Solid video to represent why you’re needed in the Content Creator space. Thank you.
I've still got the ARM based ReadyNAS Duo v2 running as a backup in my loft, it only has a couple of 1.5Tb drives in it. This has inspired me to see if I can get a better firmware version for it as the old SSL/SMB protocols are a bit of a pain to work around. If I can get a better firmware that supports newer protocols I'd be tempted to max it out with a pair of 4Tb drives and use it 'til it dies...
Thank you for this great video with tape/glue and adventures
Hardware Haven is now on glorious 4K! Congrats!
I also have a ReadyNAS Duo Pro, used the serial console/minicom method to install Openmediavault on a USB device, as I don't want the OS to reside on data disks and the internal flash is only 128MB. The BIOS can only boot from the internal flash memory and I couldn't figure out how to move the bootloader there, so I have to remember holding the "backup" button on every boot - a very mild inconvenience since I use the device as cold storage, only turning it on occasionally. It works very well for my purposes, the CPU is anemic but has no problems saturating a gigabit connection. Tip: It uses DDR3l (low voltage) modules and the platform is limited to 2GB despite what Intel sometimes claims in their marketing. Won't boot with a bigger stick, I left the 1GB in, since it's enough for Openmediavailt.
That is actually pretty nice. Custom small board, decent cooling, easy access to serial console, nothing locked at the bios or bootloader. It saturates 1Gbps connection. Not too bad.
I had a similar 6 bay readynas that i looked into and played with. These things were bult like a tank. I did USB to TTL to install debian/omv. Although the one i worked with, there is also a VGA header on the motherboard that you can buy an adapter and get video output easily. Check if yours has that too? Neverthelss, even you can install the "new" ReadyNAS OS on old hardware, there is no official support. If anything happens to their "proprietary" RAID, all data might be technically lost. Although I heard it's just mdadm. Once I installed Debian or something similar. The fan control breaks and runs at 100% ALL THE TIME. My unit also had a front LCD screen that no longer works in Debian. That's just too much compromise. In the end I sold it to someone who is familiar with old Netgear NAS for his home NAS. Definitely can't recommend buying a used unit for home use. An optiplex tower is probably cheaper and more usable.
I'm really glad I came across this video. I'm rockin' a ReadyNAS 2304 rackmount and didn't realize that the 6.10 update removed the app store and disabled the manual app upload feature. So now I absolutely have to get to work on my HP mini running Docker on Ubuntu so I can keep Plex up-to-date. I might be able to still update Plex on the NAS over SSH, but I only have the admin password, not root, so there may be some hard limitations.
This is exactly what I did here, Running an old QNAP TS-269L, 12 year old Atom D2550 with 3GB RAM. I swapped the drives with new ones (seagate exos), plugged an old sata ssd over usb, installed OpenMediaVault on it and been running solid for about a year and a half. only downside is it takes a long time to fully boot if theres a power outage, i assume it's cause of the fs check on the big drive. I might give casaOS a try and see how that goes.
i got a ready nas 2 duo that i use as a backup mirror for my proxmox server. it actually still is fairly usable as "just storage"
I recently purchased an ITX intel atom d525 mobo and I wasn't sure how to use it yet. Until I came across your video. Thanks a lot!
Persistence paid off in the end. Another intriguing video.
HH, I don't think you'll ever see this but... I'm still running my ReadyNAS 102 I bought new. It just works. And works. And works. 😎
I have 4 of these that I purchased 1 at a time from around 2013. What mine have that yours does not have is a eSATA port on the back. I can plug in a 1 to 5 SATA board via eSATA and make a RAID5 array with 5 hard drives. It shows up on version 6 software as EDA500. It is really slow but gets the job done.
Had a ReadyNAS Duo V2 for a couple of years. Same problem with SMB1 and an older Firefox version like v63 was needed in order to access it (even made some videos about it on this channel). Regardless, mine had only 256mb ram and couldn't find any suitable 1gb stick after a few months of searching (also didn't had those 4 pins) so I had to let it go eventually this year and sold it for 30 bucks just to make some space around, but definitely will look around for your model to play with it. Nice video, as always. Cheers!
I reminds me of my old Windows Home Server. Home NAS can be very useful. Good video!
my 2008 synology NAS (with DSM 4 as it's latest supported OS) just cried a little. (was bought to literally be a NAS, nothing else, and is still doing that fine even if the "gigabit" ethernet only actually transfers at 100MBit speed 😭 - Yes, I'm building a new one BTW)
I bought my readynas ultra 6 plus in the 2010-11 time frame when I was working for microserf, marketing hyper-v to the customer base of the largest server manufacturer here in texas. I originally set it up in a raid 6 with 3 tb toshiba drives, (never had a disk failure) had a power supply failure about 7 years ago, replace it and back in business. I did a hot swap from the 3 tb drives to 4 tb in 2021, and the netgear software performed the upgrade flawlessly. all of my TVs (dlna) still connect to it for media, my systems use it for storage, (smb as well as iscsi) and it interacts with my other storage (drobo, seagate, and truenas core and scale) devices. no issues from my end on this amazing, robust unit...... do I find your use "shockingly" useful? nope. I'd expect it......
I just did almost exactly this with a 2009/2010 Acer Aspire easyStore H340. I have never had it working but figured i would mess with it the other day. Got it all up and running and it will be going to my moms so she can use it as a backup for her business!
That's awesome!
Serial is such a beautiful and simple connection method
Heck, I'm still using 2 Promise DS4600's from 2009. It's a DAS versus NAS, but it uses eSATA and gets 200+ MB/second in RAID5 with 4 disks. It uses 11 watts with 4 drives spun down and 36 with drives active.
Amazing. Have one of these units in archive. Definitely a mod I'll be doing.
How dare you! 😂 I got one of these brand new in 2011 and I am still using it today. I haven't even had to change the drives in it yet. She's not old!
She's a workhorse!
And I already had my driver's license for a decade then!
Actually no words can describe the grate adventure you did.
I actually still run a much older, D-Link DNS-323 NAS. it has 64 MB of RAM (yes MB). It's flashed to run an old version of Debian, and exports an 8TB drive to the network with NBD, which is a simpler version of iSCSI. Nothing is required from the NAS itself than basically be an adapter from TCP/IP to SATA and back. The FS is not mounted on the NAS. Hence the ridiculously low RAM amount can still work even with a relatively huge disk.
Absolutely super video, sir!! Love to see all the work you put into making that beast work!! Would love to know if there really were some way to get more than 1GB on that beast. Great as always!
I might order some different RAM just to see haha
@@HardwareHaven Sometimes those older CPUs had to have only certain configurations of ram chips on the sticks themselves...maybe??
Would really like to see this thing upgraded as much as possible and then to see how hard/far you can push it!
I made a NAS for my dad about ten years ago using an Athlon II X2 250, first released in 2009. It still runs TrueNAS really well. It’s a bit short on RAM now that I’m running a Unifi VM on it but otherwise it’s hard to justify replacing it. Should probably get some new drives though.
This was my first NAS device i brought that long ago, i also got the ultra2 aswell for an upgrade. Also I still have them around collecting dust. So after seeing this im might have a tinker around.
I've been using one for Time Machine backups for the last 10+ years. Never missed a beat.
Had one of these back in '10ish I think, I was happy with it.
I still am using my readynas duo to this very day. I love it.
I really... like _really_ like your work. This was a great example of how to reuse old hardware. I mean.. you're my hero :)
I don't think I should be your hero, but I sincerely appreciate the kind words!
This is the type of content I really enjoy. Being able to hack something back to life is really interesting to me. Great idea!
My AMD AM1 System (2015) is still running Debian 12 + my docker :) Old systems are fully underrated.
Great video. I had several of these back in the day. My 3rd solution 😂
I have a Synology DS211 I bought new (in 2011) - it's been running 24/7 (except for sporadic whole home power outages) all this time....
I still use a Synology DS210J to this day, keep all my foundation files on it; important stuff…got it in 2010, still compatible with every modern device I have!
Had to work with ReadyNAS Duo. Their NFS perf was so low you'd need to manually hand out waiting queue tickets to the bytes before transfer.
When in debian you can dd content of internal mmc drive to a file to have backup of original OS. I've installed hacked Syn0logy on my Netgear and it works fine (except it is outdated as well). I think I even have spare one somewhere.
Excellent video! You have a tenacity to find a solution that I had a couple decades ago. Now that I'm in my 50s, I'm willing to do SOME tinkering, but I'd rather find a guide/tutorial/wiki and just make it work. I have a similar NAS, an Iomega StorCenter ix2 from 2013. It's been powered down and gathering dust since last year, when I did my first DIY TrueNAS build based off your videos. It'd be cool if you did a similar project for that model (nudge nudge hint hint)
This is a great video just started watching your videos cause I'm trying to make a NAS of my own lol
Thanks! And good luck
I had one of these at my parents house cool to see it still alive
At 7:02 Ram upgrade.... CPU-L (nice app!!) lists the speed as DDR3-800 or DDR2-800/667. Maybe the BIOS is locked to a specific size?? Hope that helps....
Possibly!
Netgear actually made excellent nas....nice video and thanks
Still rocking a Netgear RN104 (4-bay) and it's still supported by Netgear!
I have Pro4 and few days ago i installed on this Netgear NAS latest version of Synology DSM 7.2.1 (Xpenology TCRP with M-Shell). So you also can do this :) It works very nice even with 2GB RAM installed. BTW Pro4 has Atom D510 and support 4GB DDR2. Pro2 has D525 and support only 2GB DDR3 in single slot.
Man what a great video, I would have loved to see if Open Media Vault would have worked though.
I have two of these, one with 12TB RAID 1, and the other with 20TB RAID 0. Surprisingly versatile and very reliable despite the dated and clunky software.
I still use a Netgear ReadyNas NV+ V2 as a spare backup (it's off except once a month) it's on raidiator 5.3.11 looks like there may be some hacks to improve it. it's on the max drive capacity available (4T per drive and almost full) I wish I could fit something modern in it as the case is so much better built than the Plastic QNAP that replaced it. (doc says 2011 so I guess it's about 12 years since I bought it)
I still run a ReadyNAS Duo (Not the Pro version), as a basic file share for some of my video editing archive (4TB drive limit works fine for this) and the 2nd drive has my MP3 archive (amongst a few other bits and bobs) and runs teh Squeezebox server for our Squeezebox Radio system in the house for playing music. Shame Logitech discontinued their mobile app, but Squeezer still works as a 3rd party remote/contro system, or the web controller. My older (First gen) Duo went off to the big E-waste pile in the sky (OK at work) and it's 2x2TB drives are still currently running in my 4-bay Synology box, although they are due to be replaced with some 8TB when my tax refund arrives in a month or 3.
RAIDin' good old Ultra6 (upgraded to OS6 few years ago) since 2011 and 526x since 2019. Ultra6 has VGA header on mobo.
*Gently pats his 4 bay QNAP from mid-2009*
I've had exacly this nas :D I was able to install Newer ReadyOS6 and install as much ram as was possible. It had completely different GUI
I have a ReadyNAS NV+ V2, probably about a year older, 4 bay, ARM based. just use it as an offline backup of important stuff
I miss my LG N2R1D. It passed away a few years ego.
I'm still using an Iomega ix-2 200 NAS with an up-to-date Debian install instead of the original firmware. Fairly slow single core Marvel Kirkwood with 256 MB RAM, but it still does the job administrated via SSH with Samba and mdadm for some light backup jobs.
Kirkwood lovers unite
My first "NAS" was built with ASRock itx board with the same CPU and 8G of ram so the CPU is supporting more ram. Your issue can be from the type of module or the BIOS. Unfortunately for me the processor is low performance and had issues with zfs especially when kernel update required the dkms module to be recompiled, but the regular mdraid was working as expected. Replaced it due to lack of space and noise that the CPU fan was generating.
i like the 'going crazy' part
Reminds me of my Intel Atom N330 system that worked perfectly fine for SMB (at home) until the day I decided the hardware was dated and needed to be replaced. I actually hosted a website with it for a while too. It would still run the latest version of Debian/Ubuntu if I was to re-load it today but doesn't stand a chance to it's Ryzen 3600 replacement. It's kind of unfortunate that many of those NAS systems were made to be a bit proprietary. It's cool that it at least had a serial console.
Been hoping to try and find a solution like this for my old Drobo5n. Here's hoping some innovative modder takes a stab at it. Great video!
I have an ASUS Atom 2-in-1 running OMV. Made it work with 1 internal HDD and another external backup HDD through a USB Hub with Ethernet. Everything worked fine except the transfer speed is limited by the 2 GB internal memory.
I have the DLink DNS 320. With two 16TB disks. It could initialize the disks but not format the drives because mk2fs would use all the 128MB of ram. I needed to format the partitions on my PC. I did not want to use the Alt-F firmware because samba speed was half of the original. It is a teenager from 2010 but at least it had security patches until 2019 and had a gigabit port so it is kinda usable still.
This is really interesting. One thing I've been wondering is how difficult it would be to convert this to some kind of JBOD? I feel like this could be a followup to your last video - basically a slightly less jank version of that idea.
Sadly with this I think pretty tough. While it looks like standard PCIe connections, the SATA controller isn't on the daughter board; it's on the motherboard. So it would take some crazy stuff to repurpose lol
My trusty good old Synology DS410 from 2010 is still going on strong, and it's been running 24/7 since the day i bought it back in 2010 🙂 Only been changing 1 External PSU Brick and worn out HDD's and stuffed in double the HDD Size and double the Ram that Synology say it supports 😀
Since you got debian 12 to install and run on this old NAS, maybe you could try openmediavault. It's based on debian (like truenas scale), and a recent release (version 7) moved to debian 12 - chances are good that it will also work. Unlike truenas, OMV doesn't default to zfs, so it's more light-weight. You can even overlay OMV onto an existing debian install. Quite easy. Maybe another followup video?
With a multimeter it would be pretty easy to just test out the serial port. You can detect what is ground and what is 3.3v and the other two pins will be data and can be tried one way or the other
I'm still running our office's file server on a Dell 2950 running some linux file server. I don't even remember what flavour of linux since it's so old and doesn't require a lot of care and feeding. For those counting at home, that's an 18 year old server. It is getting replaced soon, mainly because we're starting to get close to filling it.
I had a PowerEdge 2950 III with 2x E5420, 32GB RAM, 4x 146GB 15K SAS HDDs hosting Minecraft servers, a website and forums in 2013-2017. I would have ran it longer but I didn't have a room to run it in anymore and there wasn't many players left on the MC server anyway. I still have the PowerEdge but I haven't powered it on in 5 years. Mine was manufactured in 21.5.2009 so it will soon be 15 years old
My NAS uses a Supermicro X10SL7-F mobo that's about 11 years old now, and I don't foresee myself replacing it any time soon. Hell, I'll probably finish collecting 8 16TB drives and finally be able to upgrade the whole pool's size first, even if it takes another decade.
I just got an old iOMEGA HMNHD 2 NAS which runs a modified debian 5, the furthest i got is debian 6. Its ARM based and has only one drive. 600Mhz ARMv6 Dual Core 256MB RAM, Not upgradeable. I wonder if it can be updated further than debian 6, but for now its running with an ancient webmin version as the webinterface. Even got XRDP and LXDE installed so i can use some GUI tools to configure things.
LOL these old readynas I'm running a readynas 6 pro on openmediavault On a core 2 duo. No efficient but it holds my jellyfin archive
great content tnx
Lmao that box has more features and expandability than my Mycloud EX2
Speaking of an old NAS, I still have a DNS-323 around here somewhere.
This was really cool. :)
I did have a similar path transforming a Riverbed cx755 into a nas
Hi, about the flash memory i can suggest to boot a clonezilla iso with the same tweak you have achieved with the debian 12 usb and try to do a "dump" of the entire flash memory and then experiment flashing other wild o.s. on it 😁 great work! P.S. don't put yourself down, you needed help from other people (and there's nothing wrong) but you achieved a lot by yourself!
My first NAS has a Flash-based admin panel. Great. But I haven't used it for several years.