Network attached storage devices have become increasingly popular as people search for alternatives—or supplements—to their cloud storage subscriptions. That is where a new mini PC released by Youyeetoo, which is designed primarily for use as a miniature NAS, can shine.
The device, the NestDisk, is 5.75 x 3.8 inches and just 1.25 inches thick, which is smaller than some portable batteries I’ve had.
Under the hood, the NestDisk features an N150, one of Intel’s inexpensive, low-power processors. It has 4 cores and runs at up to 3.6Ghz out of the box, though the normal frequency is 1.6GHz. The CPU only pulls about 6 watts, even under load, which is optimal for a device that you need to be active and accessible at all times without driving up your electricity bill.
It comes with 12GB of LPDDR5 as its default configuration. You can optionally expand that to 16GB if you want. If you’re planning on trying to run additional services on your NAS, I’d certainly recommend buying up on the RAM. You’ll wind up using it eventually.
The real standout feature, however, is the number of M.2 PCIe 3.0 slots. It has four, which is a solid number even on a full-sized desktop motherboard. Each slot supports up to a 1TB drive, which allows you to pack in up to 4TB of storage.
Credit: Youyeetoo
To pair with the speedy read and write speeds that you can get from the NVME SSDs, the NestDisk also comes packing a 2.5 gigabit Ethernet port. It can’t match the full speed of the NVMe drives, but it is still fast enough to transfer to about 18 gigabytes per minute. Even if you have an enormous amount of data to back up—like a full phone with 300GB of pictures—you’re looking at less than 30 minutes.
The rest of the features are pretty standard. It has integrated Intel graphics, a USB-C port for power, a second USB-C port for video, audio, or data, an HDMI port, a standard 3.5mm aux port, Bluetooth 5.2, and Wi-Fi.
In a pinch, you could certainly use it as a tiny desktop PC for light office work, though it would struggle to do anything graphically intensive.
On the software side, it comes loaded with Open Media Vault (OMV), which is a Debian-based Linux distro designed from the ground up for use as a NAS. Of course, you aren’t limited to that. You could certainly replace it with most any Linux distro of your choice, and you could even run Windows 11 on it if you really wanted to, though Windows 11 doesn’t offer much if your goal is to use the NestDisk as a NAS.
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Of course, once you have a mini NAS with NVME M.2 ports, you’ll need drives to go with it. The NestDisk’s PCIe interface is limited to PCIe 3.0 speeds, so there is no point in buying extremely expensive PCIe 5.0 drives—you won’t be able to use them. You’re better off spending those savings on the extra RAM instead.
Source: Youyeetoo, LinuxGizmos
