WEBVTT

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running out of storage space on your iPhone or for your photo backups I think

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is a problem we've all run into but how do you solve it right I don't know about

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you but I don't really like subscriptions as much as we end up

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having them anyways so what's your other option well hosting the storage yourself

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with something like this maybe from Asus store this is their flash store 12 Pro

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Gen 2 and I wasn't a huge fan of the

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first one I like the idea but to be honest it wasn't fast enough so you're

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putting fast storage and you're ending up with none of the performance they

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have told me they have solved that problem on this Gen 2 this is now fast

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enough to mostly saturate the 10 gbit

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ports and we're going to find out if they lied so in the Box here we've got a

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power cable power brick 12vt 10 amp 120

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W power brake there we've got a actually pretty long power cable so that looks

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nice see those in a sec and then the

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nas now the cool thing about this unit unlike a lot of the nas units you can

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just buy off the shelf you notice it's pretty small this is an NVMe based Nas

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so instead of hard drives it uses m.2 ssds cost-wise not as cheap for the

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storage for terabyte as you would get with a hard drive but it is in theory

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quite a bit faster on the back we've got dual RJ45 10 GB Ethernet ports two 10 GB

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USB type A ports and two USB 440 gig

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ports ports that's that's a lot of connectivity right here and you could

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use that USB 4 for presumably an egpu

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you could even use it for like a Thunderbolt to 25 gbit Nick if you want

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it I guess pretty cool we've got a reset button and then a power jack over here

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there's also a Kensington lock if that's something you need and then on the front

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another USB port oh it's also 10 GB that's pretty much up for the iio is

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there a power button oh oh oh I'm stupid hey there's a power button I think

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there's RGB here so it probably a bit more obvious once it's plugged in but

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before I open it I think there's another thing in the Box ah yes cables we've got

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propaganda here AI master I guess I'll

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leave that here what else do we got oh it actually comes with two Ethernet

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cables that's cool look at this LTT Store.com Precision screwdriver kit

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perfect thing for taking apart your Asus store Nas If you were to buy one I could

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live in a universe where these would be toolless open

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close ah yes okay so you can see the fan

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there you see they use a USB type a port to be like a hot swap pluggable

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connector for the fan and they do still use a normal four pin fan connector on

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the board so you could in theory change this to a different fan this is an 80 mm

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fan beautiful so if you want to swap that out you could just make sure it's a

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thin boy look at all those chickens and by chickens I mean m.2 slots

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she being the flash store 12 you can see

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that there is 1 2 3 4 5 six dicks slots on this side but then there's also more

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slots on the other side which how do I get at

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those boom look at that more m.2 slots

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the Coss battery is right there if you need to change it so it's easily

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accessible it's not like tucked underneath anything and then on this

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side we can see our RAM which is also

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super easy to access uh by default this kit ships with a ddr5 5600 16 GB CL 46

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stick but there is two slots so I guess in theory you could add more you could

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add another stick or take this one out and put your own stick now if you've

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been looking at this closely you can see that they actually print the speed of

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each port on here now this is a newer CPU in this unit that's a lot faster

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than the previous one it's AMD ryzen powered uh so there's more PCIe Lanes

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from what I understand but there is still not enough to run 12 ssds at all

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gen 4x4 so we've got one gen 4x4 uh

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three gen 4x2 two gen 4x1 on this side

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and then on the other side two more gen 4x1 two gen 3x 1s a gen 3x4 and a gen 3x

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two that is a lot of different specs and part of my brain

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goes Ah that's kind of funky but I also

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understand there's only so many lanes that they get off of whatever chip that

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they're putting in here so they have to make concessions somewhere it's probably

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not going to matter anyways because the combined performance of that many ssds

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is Far and Away going to exceed the amount of networking you have which is

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only 20 GB even if you were to put in like a 25 gig Nick that's only 2 and 1

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12 plus gigabytes a second which realistically one SSD could saturate so

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yes it's a little confusing it's not in my brain my first choice but at the end

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of the day for a real world application it probably doesn't matter speaking of

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ssds I have

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this is so supremely Overkill but uh I

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don't really care I do have seven of these saent rocket 4 plus 8 tbte drives

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which are just about the beefiest possible ssds you can install in here it

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is nice and easy to install ssds in here they got little toolless doohickeys you

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just kind of push back and it pops into place which is nice uh that do does kind

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of beg the question of why they made it so you have to use a screwdriver to open

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it because isz at that point you would have a screwdriver if you're wondering

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about thermals I suspect these are going to get pretty hot not as hot as if we

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had 12 ssds in there and we're not really pushing these ssds to the max um

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but you'll notice there are extra like threaded inserts here and those are for

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heat sinks that don't come with this unit you have to purchase separately um

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and they're not that cheap to get enough for one side for six ssds is $39

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oh I forgot to mention also there is some indicator lights on the top we've

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got power what looks like a heartbeat I guess maybe that's like if there's an

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error that will light up red we've got networking and a storage indicator all

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right let's get this thing plugged in and powered

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does it do exactly well besides being both a finger grip and a kickstand it's

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to snap.com sshort Circuit to get one for yourself and 50% off another for

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your partner we'll have it linked down below after all flowers die magnets last

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forever it just says to turn it on that's the end of the instructions oh

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actually I guess it says to download Asus control center or AI Master on my

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phone maybe I'll try AI master that sounds like fun oh I see lights okay so

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we got power I guess this indicator light also shows green if things are

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good and no networking because yeah I didn't plug in the networking that makes

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sense now speaking of networking I have a ubiquity Flex XG switch over here this

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has four 10 GB ports so what we're going to do for our little testy test is plug

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both of them into the Asus store and then I have two different laptops that

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we're going to connect both with 10 gig so we can test the full 20 gig capacity

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of this thing in a few minutes here there we go blue light on networking So

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in theory I can now find this maybe hey

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wow that was quick instantly found it on the same network cool oneclick setup oh

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boy do I dare I don't want to like reset it and have to do it again but I'm

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curious what the oneclick setup does let's do it cuz like okay that was not

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one click brother look at all this stuff I have to do that's not one click you

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liars I'm going to go with Max Capacity

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Oh cannot connect your server oh NOS I I can't imagine what possibly

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happened oh I just unplugged the power

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no well right off the bat we have an ass here I don't know how it set it up I we

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got activity monitor you can see our process usage Drive usage oh here we go

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total capacity is 50 terabytes and it oh

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my God it did a raid zero I guess that is maximum capacity but

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like to allow in the oneclick setup

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somebody that picks maximum capacity to do a raid zero is a little sketchy raid

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zero is striping all of the discs that means if you write a file say like a 1

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Gigabyte file it's going to split that

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one gig file into however many drives you have worth of pieces and store a

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piece on each drive this is great for performance and great for lots of

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capacity but if any of those ssds die

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you lose everything I would not recommend anyone configure their Nas

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like that but let's jump over to an actual computer so we can get all the

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settings in the web like computer version it tells you what type of raid

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is going to be used depending on what you pick so maximum capacity is raid

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zero balanced is raid five which means you have one disc worth of data

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protections so you can have one of your ssds fail and you'll you won't lose data

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and then Superior data protection is raid six which means you can have two

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drives fail and not lose any data that being said they really need to add like

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a big red warning like raid zero is not

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safe if I'm a consumer and I don't know what raid zero is and that's the default

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option maximum capacity sounds great I'm just going to click that right I don't

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care I got the system reset up as a raid five and I'm ready to copy some files

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from our single client so we've only got one 10 gig connection we'll try it with

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a second client in a sec but I do just want to look at the power consumption

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it's drawing 34 35 Watts let's copy some

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files I've got this Sonet Thunderbolt to 10 GB dongle plugged into this MacBook

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Air and we should be able to saturate 10

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gig speeds no problem so I've got addo

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dis Benchmark writing to our Network share it's writing random data on a

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block size of 1 Megabyte in four streams so it's opening four separate

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connections of the device it seems like it can handle writing at 1 GB per second

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consistently looks around 55 56 Watts

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let me grab the other laptop while I let this run and we'll see what it does at 2

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GB a second I think the previous version that we tested on LTT would cap out at

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like 500 megabytes a second so this is already way better so that's cool that's

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a lot slower uh it might be okay this might be

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a little bit much sauce to be honest cuz I'm doing like four streams per client

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but let's try two streams per because that's what I was doing honestly I'm a

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little confused okay it can do 20 gig

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reads look at that we're doing it right now that's pretty cool 10 gbit works out

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to be like 1.2 GB a second and we're doing 2.4 GB a second on the dot read

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speed I made it work it actually can do

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20 gbit right speed we're doing 2.1 2.2

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GB a second it's just that I had to use Raid zero to do it which is

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not great it feels like they should be

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able to do 2 GB a second in raid 5 we

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were capping out 1.6 1.7 GB a second

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under optimal circumstances with our two clients in raid zero mode I was able to

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do pretty much 2 GB a second consistently right speed but overall it

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seems like the problem comes more from a parody calculation being slow read

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performance is great right performance I really it's kind of the same problem is

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last time with the original flash store it has a lot of networking but it can't

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quite use it all to be honest for most people if you only have one client that

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you're ever going to connect with 10 gbit or maybe two it's probably fine even if you

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consider our office here where we have a crazy Nas we're usually only reaching 10

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maybe 20 gab in a given day uh with 10

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editors working off of it so maybe maybe it's not that big of a problem it just

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feels like the hardware is not quite specked for the networking it's

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especially when you consider the price the original flash store which could do

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1 GB a second read and I think around 5 600 megabytes a second right was $800

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for the 12 Bay or $450 for the 6 Bay at

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least that's what the pricing on B&H shows right now the Gen 2 is

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,000 for the six drive and

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$400 for the 12 drive that is not cheap

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$1,400 is a lot of money that's gaming

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computer territory even if we ignore the 12 drive one and go let's let's talk the

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six drive one 1,000 us at that point I

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might as well just build a desktop computer and put some m do2s in it like

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yes they made it better it can read at 2 GB a second it can almost write at 2 GB

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a second but it's really expensive they also kind of cut some features out of

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the old one it no longer has an igpu you notice there's no HDMI port so we can't

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have a display play output sure you can run Plex but you're not going to be

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using any sort of Hardware accelerated transcoding and you can't install a

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different operating system on it at least as far as I can see and they don't

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advertise it on the product page because before they would tell you to do it by

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booting up into the BIOS with a monitor and stuff but no HDMI port how do you do

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that you do get the benefit of their fancy Nas operating system and the stuff

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that goes with that but there are ways around that there's true Nas there's

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open media Vault there's some other projects that you can use to install Nas

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operating systems that are more like what you would get on something like this I'm not going to say the name like

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yes they did fix the problem I identified in the old unit it can

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saturate a 10 gig connection read and write and if that's enough for you great

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but then they added a second 10 gig connection and didn't make it fast

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enough to handle that I guess if you want an m.2 SSD Nas and you don't want

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to have to fuss about building your own and installing your own operating system

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the user experience was not bad they do need to fix some things with the default

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selections maybe it could work for you I probably checked out the first gen one

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unless you need crazy performance but man I don't know I don't know it feels a

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bit like price gouging and it feels like this is the end of the video so hit like

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get subscribed let me know what you think about this thing I don't really

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get it I would build my own but maybe

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you think differently let me know goodbye