Okay, so I left this till last because I have a lot to say. Also, it’s on the bottom of the rack so, ehm, chronology.
My UP (Im not typing that over and over) is populated with 7x 4TB Ironwolf drives. I think some might be pro’s but for the sake of everything, it’s just Ironwolf drives. I have used some of these drives in TrueNAS scale, and purchased more to be used with the UP once it had arrived.
RAID
I have opted for ‘Basic Protection’ in the OS, this is RAID5 which means that I can survive one drive failure without losing the entire data set. When I purchased this item, RAID6 was not available, I would like to switch to RAID6 but (contrary to every comment that you can migrated from 5 to 6 without data loss) the OS seems to indicate directly that it will wipe all data when moving to a different RAID setup. I have several backups of the most critical data, but I am working on getting all the data to my shuckdrive in my PC so that I can change it if I feel brave enough. Not only do I not fancy transferring everything back after a format, but I also dont want to put the strain on the drives for doing a complete rebuild and then transferring everything again if it is lost. I’m just going to have to back everything up again, and then if/when there’s a failure I can replace the drives and start afresh. As the kids say, it is what it is.
Operating system
The OS is fine. My only issue is that the Drive software isnt built into the standard Unifi OS. It’s seperate. Like, it’s own app. Also, speaking of apps, the IOS app is just a link to a webpage. It doesnt feel very fleshed out yet. Yes, it’s Unifi’s first attempt at a NAS, but I would have thought that the basics would be obvious as to what someone might need. Which I will get to in a sec, but it’s a bit jarring that Protect/Access etc are all built into one UI, but the Drive section is it’s own subsystem. Whatever, it’s not a big deal, but it just feels a bit ‘half baked’.
Limitations of Drive
As I mentioned in a previous post, I went into this expecting nothign but a NAS OS. I didnt want docker containers (I have these on my MS-01 with Proxmox) or VMs or an app store, or anything other than just host the damn files. That being said, what would have been nice is ISCSI support, and Steam library support. There seems to be a block on running .exe files from the network shares you can create on the UP. It just doesnt work, therefore you cant use it as a library destination from Steam, because it just spits out an error. I did raise a query on the official Drive support community page but nobody got back to me with a fix. It’s basically a permissions error, but since it’s not currently possible at the time of writing to SSH into the UP it’s not possible to change directory permissions. It’s certainly not possible to change them via the OS.
My Thoughts
I cant find anything wrong essentially with the Drive OS other than it’s limited. What it does, it does fine. I can create users, I can get them verified by Unifi Identity, I can send invitations for access to specific areas of the files I have stored, it all works okay, I just WISH THERE WAS MORE. Will this come with time, maybe. And it is a maybe. I hope this wont be abandonware by Unifi. Even when I bought it I knew that the first version is always a test, always an alpha version, but my faith is heartened by the fact that a lot of people are buying this thing and that it’s always out of stock. That being said… eeeeeeeeeeeee I dont know.
All in all, I’d love to see more features, then again, I dont want the team behind this to necessarily dilute the main attraction to this which is just a solid place to store your files. Currently the most advanced thing I have requested of this NAS is to host my Plex media items and I’ve mapped access in an Ubuntu VM containing Plex via fstab, so that the share is mounted and always available to that share, so I can watch whatever is on that share. Also, take a shot every time you read the word “share”. Or not. Your perogative.
Top and bottom is that the machine is fine. I transitioned from a custom TrueNAS Scale build to this. I would have had to have bought a new case anyway if I wanted more than 5 drives (which I did) and the price to feature ratio of the UP is off the charts – 7 bay NAS with 10GB, yeah, lets see Synology or Qnap do that for the price of this thing. Believe me, they cant. Can you do it on the DIY? Sure. But this little baby just purrs during read/write access and sits quietly when not in use. I am very much enjoying it being part of my setup. Even if it is just a repurposed NVR 😛