11 ms·

Introducing the Nextcloud Box

132 points by SunboX 10y ago

joeyrobert 10y ago
Wouldn't the drive performance be significantly inhibited by RPi's USB 2.0 interface? A small board with SATA or USB 3.0 would be much faster.
- tdkl 10y ago
  Yes it would, but a board who isn't inhibited by sharing the USB and network on the same bus and is supported like rPI wouldn't cost this kind of money. I'm quite surprised about the price (70€ with free shipping over EU), which is very tempting for someone who needs an external drive anyway. I hope there is more in the future to come in this area to bring the notion of home owned appliances instead of the cloud. Specially with IoT around the corner - those devices should communicate to a home server like this only.
  - zokier 10y ago
    > I hope there is more in the future to come in this area to bring the notion of home owned appliances instead of the cloud. NAS boxes are relatively popular, and the major vendors are heavily leaning on making them the "all-in-one" home/soho servers as demonstrated by the wide range of applications available to them: https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/app_packages/all_app https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/app_packages/all_app https://www.qnap.com/en/app_center/ https://www.qnap.com/en/app_center/
- jdietrich 10y ago
  The Orange Pi Plus has SATA. https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/NEW-orange-pi-plus-Allwinner-A31s-Dual-Core-1GB-RAM-Open-source-development-board/1553371_32248189300.html https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/NEW-orange-pi-plus-...
- jospoortvliet 10y ago
  yeah, the Pi isn't a super platform for this. We've made the box hardware-compatible with the oDroid C2 so people have an upgrade path - I understand Linux 4.10 will have out of the box oDroid C2 support so it shouldn't be too much after that that Canonical's Ubuntu Core will support it, too, and users can pick one up if they like.
motoboi 10y ago
No RAID for personal storage?!? What about a warning stating that you cannot keep your important stuff here unless you want to loose them in a undetermined moment in the future?
- detaro 10y ago
  personal storage of "important stuff" doesn't need RAID, it needs BACKUPS. RAID offers protection only against a comparatively tiny subset of risk factors.
  - striking 10y ago
    I dunno, hard drives stop working basically at random in my experience. RAID is extremely helpful if your device is physically safe and not prone to infection. Plus, there's only so much you can back up to the cloud. I'd back up 125GB of personal pictures, but not 1.25TB of ripped Bluray media.
    - zokier 10y ago
      Local backups are a thing. Even just having second disk in the same system is much better than nothing (comparable to RAID1 but at higher level).
      - striking 10y ago
        Local backups are a pain. RAID is advantageous for multiple reasons.
  - countingteeth 10y ago
    I don't know, but in my personal three decades of experience "inevitable disk failure" is not a "tiny subset of risk factors." RAID is huge defense for keeping "inevitable disk failure" from turning into "massive data loss." Do you, personally, test backup and restore of ALL of your data that you care about at acceptable loss intervals? Are you sure? And if your acceptable loss interval is "zero," then redundant synchronous storage across devices in one form or another is all there is. Backup is a total real-world solution to data loss like antivirus is a total real-world solution to malware and infosec.
kraftman 10y ago
So you're buying a case and a hard drive, you have to put it together yourself, and it only works with a raspberry pi 2? Seems like anyone interested enough to buy this would just do it themselves.
- tdkl 10y ago
  The price is very competitive, getting all the parts + cables and power brick would cost more.
  - ac29 10y ago
    A 1TB enclosed external USB HD from Western Digital costs $60 (see NewEgg, Amazon, or whatever's relevant in your country). This costs $80. So, the extra $20 covers a SD card and a few screws to mount a Raspberry Pi (not included)? Doesn't seem competitive at all.
    - tdkl 10y ago
      I wrote that thinking the Pi is included (they wrote "compute board"), but it seems it's just the drive and case.
    - jospoortvliet 10y ago
      The kit to compare it to is the PiDrive kit from WD, which costs alone more than our kit WITH case. A normal external hard drive risks not working with a Pi. This 2.5" USB drive is optimized for low power usage, esp at startup and comes with a cable and charger which powers both the drive and Pi from a single cable. Obviously, if you are looking for an external USB drive for your computer, this is all not relevant. But if you want to use it with a Pi or a similar board, this kit is far superior.
- s_q_b 10y ago
  That was my first thought as well. I kept waiting for the magic that never came. However, if you look at the bottom it states that this case is a reference design, much like the Google phones, intended to be a platform upon which others can build new products.
Meph504 10y ago
I ordered one of these when western digital announced them a few months ago, it's basically a 1tb laptop hard drive. and a bulky plastic case. Firstly, the cable layout is frustrating, and requires bending the cables in such away that makes closing the case a pain. Secondly, the software is very unimpressive, I had the system just stop responding several times, the windows client is rather underwhelming as well. I just see no real advantages to say combining my own raspberry pi with a WD passport. Other than the plastic box.
- vlunkr 10y ago
  Is it cheaper if you buy it this way? That's the only advantage I see.
  - cm3 10y ago
    From the description on website, it appears to not bundle the computer, just the case and hdd. So, if we consider the HDD to be 60EURO max, having compared to other WD blue mobile disks (couldn't find the exact model listed anywhere), then that leaves you with 10EURO for the case. The total of 70EUROs may or may not include shipping, I couldn't figure that out without trying to place an order. It's not cheap, but that pricing isn't expensive either. If it includes a Pi 2, then it's cheap.
    - tdkl 10y ago
      The Nextcloud box consists of the following parts: 1 TB USB3 hard drive from WDLabs Nextcloud case with room for the drive and a compute board It's worded weird, but I assumed the "compute board" is the PI.
      - cm3 10y ago
        Strictly speaking that doesn't say it includes one, just that there's room for one. But I hope you're right. I've looked at the PDF instructions and still wasn't any wiser.
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
dammitcoetzee 10y ago
Oh god the bend radius on those cables. Also atrocious sinking and warping. This is the kind of stuff I have nightmares about. Please if you're thinking of building a hardware project and have never done it before at least consult someone like me. I'll look over anyone in SF's project and give a list of things to worry over for the price of a coffee, just don't do this.
- ar0 10y ago
  While I cannot judge on the merits of your recommendations (not being a hardware guy myself), I do want to point out that this is a project in collaboration with WDLabs (as in Western Digital), according to the website. "Have never done it before" would not be a description I would apply to Western Digital regarding hardware products. The website admits however, that this is more of a "reference device, meant to inspire and invite anyone to build their own", so I would not expect the most rugged quality. In any case, as you need to bring your own Raspberry Pi, it seems to be more of a product for tinkerers than for enterprise-strength reliability.
  - dammitcoetzee 10y ago
    Well, I don't disagree with you, but I can add some merit to my recommendations. 1. Each cable has a bend radius recommended by the supplier. If this bend radius is exceeded (too small) then it is very unlikely that the cabling will function properly electrically, especially for high speed communications. Cross-talk, dropped packets, etc. If anything the supplier is off the hook for meeting their spec since it wasn't installed correctly. 2. The plastic insulation will take this for a while but two things happen to polymers with a constant stress on them. 2.a They suffer stress relaxation via creep. The long linked molecules will reach a new alignment over time. They will no longer be in their plastic range and settle in a new configuration. This could result in more crosstalk or even a complete insulation failure as a function of time. 2.b Flexible plastics typically slowly lose plasticity over time due to the breakdown of the plasticizer that made them flexible. (That nice new cable smell) Most cables have PVC made flexible due to these additives. If this box is warm due to the heat from the drive and pi, then it's entirely likely that the cable could further degrade under the constant strain and creep and fail. Causing not only thinning but brittle breaking of the jacket. It doesn't have to be visible breaking for it to stop working electrically. Basically you can't trust your wire anymore. It could work forever. It could fail randomly. It could just cause communication errors that are hard to trace. As for the box, they just used too much plastic and pushed the thing through the machine too fast without cooling. But then again, I am not an ultra expert on injection molding. It's an art. My recommendation would be "Have a sit down with your molder, these faults do not need to be."
voiceclonr 10y ago
Not a good idea. As a personal anecdote, I had my 1TB HP simplesafe drive crash and I lost lot of precious pictures from recent years [Before moving to cloud]. The drive was Western Digital and none of the recovery software worked. You run the risk of drive failures with these and also not easy to migrate data once data grows or hardware evolves.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > You run the risk of drive failures with these All drives fail. Any drive can fail at the worst time. You must have back ups, and you must test your back ups.
  - voiceclonr 10y ago
    Agree. That's why I prefer to use cloud as they are replicated automatically.
    - countingteeth 10y ago
      "Use cloud," without more, isn't necessarily backup at all.
- ksec 10y ago
  That is why use Cloud as a backup. But have the box sit in between to speed up data delivery. I always wonder why this never have worked out. Most of today's Internet users aren't even running on 100Mbps. Why are we moving to all cloud? Why No physical box in between? For example Time Capsule that backups to iCloud.
taude 10y ago
Does this offer anything that the Lima product doesn't? [1] I bought a Lima, but never actually used it. [1] https://meetlima.com https://meetlima.com
- alanbernstein 10y ago
  Why didn't you use it?
  - taude 10y ago
    I had an existing Synology NAS, and never ended up getting an external USB drive. And then I guess I was hoping some software would just come out for my NAS that would do something similar.
- jospoortvliet 10y ago
  1. it is open source so you can actually trust it 2. it is based on software used in serious enterprises so if you want more of it, you can get that 3. it has a big and healthy ecosystem of customers, contributors and apps so it isn't going anywhere
mikestew 10y ago
I'm trying to figure out what this buys me versus a Synology box running DS Cloud (Synology's "personal cloud" app). With a Synology NAS I get: * Data on my own box. * Remote access via the DS Cloud app on devices, or the web app. * RAID with an external backup drive. With Nextcloud, it looks like I get: * Data stored where ever I like, including my Synology NAS(?). * Some kind of remote access, and it's stored on the NextCloud(?). * On my own for backups, no RAID. * No idea on pricing. If it's dirt cheap, I guess maybe a Nextcloud is an option. But if it begins to approach the price of Synology's least expensive offers I fail to see the value.
- jospoortvliet 10y ago
  well it is way cheaper than any synology solution, plus that the whole stack is open source so you can actually trust that it does what it says it does. If you care about privacy and security, that is a plus. It also will probably be slower than most synology solutions and more manual work - we'd like to improve that of course but that means we need help as this is a community effort, not a commercial thing.
simosx 10y ago
The box is running Ubuntu Core, which fully uses "snaps" instead of the traditional .deb packages. There is a post that describes their experience of selecting and implementing with Ubuntu Core for this box, at https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/09/29/the-making-of-the-nextcloud-box/ https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/09/29/the-making-of-the-nex...
joshmn 10y ago
Hosting vet checking in: Sorry but what's cloudy about this? No high-availability, no redundancy. I guess Nextserver just isn't as marketable.
- chrisper 10y ago
  It's just the software that is "cloudy." Nextcloud is not being used because of this product, but rather Nextcloud just also provides this box. Kind of like Nextcloud + this box = convenience, but you can just do Nextcloud without it.
e12e 10y ago
So, can anyone shed some more light on what "Nextcloud" (the software/OS part) actually is? As far as I can gather it's more or less a fork of owncloud by one of the owncloud maintainers, paired with ubuntu core, and turned into a kind-a-sorta groupware and file server? But for some reason lacking an ldap/kerberos/ad/directory server - so it can't be the only part of a small office network - you still need ldap/AD set-up? I'm not entirely sure I see the value proposition here.
- scott00 10y ago
  It's a very recent fork of ownCloud, so if you know what that is, most of your knowledge transfers. It's basically self-hosted Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive, with some initial support for other cloud-y things: web-based document/spreadsheet/presentation software and chat/call/video conference being the main two. The value proposition is all in the self-hosted part. If you have a problem with giving a third party access to all of your files, this is a possible alternative. If you trust Google/Microsoft/Dropbox with your files, your life will probably be a whole lot easier letting their massive engineering and ops teams manage servers and software for you. It's definitely not an all-in-one small office solution, there's no email app.
  - jancborchardt 10y ago
    We do have an IMAP app for mail https://github.com/nextcloud/mail https://github.com/nextcloud/mail You can run that together with a Dovecot for example. It integrates nicely with Nextcloud Contacts for autocompletion and Files for attachments. Testing and contributions are very much welcome! :)
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  Just to add to what Scott said: One important part is that the Nextcloud Box is just a device running Nextcloud. It’s not the main product. :) We focus on developing the software, which is 100% open source and at https://github.com/nextcloud https://github.com/nextcloud (Disclaimer: I used to be Design Lead at ownCloud and moved to Nextcloud.)
bedros 10y ago
correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a fork of owncloud owncloud is nothing but horrible, full of bugs and zero innovation when it comes to file sharing.
- zakki 10y ago
  Hi, Do you know any alternative for owncloud?
  - bedros 10y ago
    personally, I use webdav; however there are a lot of good reviews of seafile if you want a true replacement of owncloud.
    - jospoortvliet 10y ago
      unless, of course, you care about security or a project that is, well, alive... There have been 1 or 2 commits in the last month so I wouldn't bet my data on it. But I'm hopelessly biassed, working for Nextcloud, so please check github for yourself when you pick a solution for your data - at least look at the pulse over the last week or month before you pick a solution. If you don't know it, here is ours: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pulse https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pulse it shows you the activity in the project. For comparison, this is bad: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/pulse https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/pulse Again, I'm biassed, so make your own conclusion, don't rely on mine. I'm just pointing the way.
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  Well, this is part of why we forked it to Nextcloud (disclaimer: I used to be Design Lead at ownCloud and moved to Nextcloud). We’re focusing a lot more on stability and innovation, and if you look at the Github statistics, you’ll see that our activity surpasses ownCloud’s by a magnitude.
ausjke 10y ago
Looked the document, and the real interesting thing is the split cable used internally, i.e. a cable that splits usb3-micro-typeB into a power-and-usb2, that cable seems neat, is it a customized one only for this product, or a generic cable that you can find on ebay? I happen to have RPI and the same WD USB3 hard drive here and with this cable I can try owncloud without the enclosure right away.
IgorPartola 10y ago
Here's the thing. If you want storage, you've got to use ZFS or be very brave and use BTRFS. RAID and single drive solutions are not going to cut it. Bit rot is a real thing and assuming you care about your data you want checksums and redundancy. If you don't want to think about it: set up a FreeNAS/NAS4Free appliance. If you do, build something slightly custom. To date, I know of no complaints maimed products that fit this criteria. It is frustrating, but family photos are not replaceable so don't take chances.
- keypusher 10y ago
  While this is likely true at the consumer level, it is not true at the enterprise level. Raid6 is used extensively, and the file hash is stored in metadata, separately. The files are walked periodically to detect and repair corruption. The same is done for parity. This has to be done with zfs too, via zfs scrub. I just don't think you can directly compare zfs with raid, as zfs is a filesystem and therefore implements some of the same things that other companies end up building on top of raid with their own custom filesystems.
  - IgorPartola 10y ago
    I did not realize there were RAID implementations that did block level checksums. ZFS is both a file system and a block layer. You would use RAID + ext4 or ZFS. The block layer parts of ZFS are comparable to RAID and are superior in many ways, including the most important: checksums.
eltoozero 10y ago
So a hard drive, one with an onboard USB bridge no less, and a raspberry Pi. USB performance on Pi is garbage, and you're sharing your storage I/O with the network I/O since they're both USB prehiperals. This is a terrible idea.
- ZenoArrow 10y ago
  It's not a terrible idea in general, I personally think it's potentially a great idea, but like you I do think the Raspberry Pi was a poor choice for this use-case. Perhaps in the next revision they'll base it around something better suited, such as the ESPRESSOBin: http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/09/23/marvell-espressobin-board-with-gigabit-ethernet-sata-pcie-and-usb-3-0-to-launch-for-39-and-up-crowdfunding/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/09/23/marvell-espressobin-b...
  - tdkl 10y ago
    Specs are impressive but > ESPRESSOBin will be launched on Kickstarter in the next few days. sigh
    - voltagex_ 10y ago
      It's almost done I think. I have high hopes for it Globalscale made great stuff with the Sheevaplug and Dreamplug.
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      The Kickstarter has already started, it's actually less than 24 hours away from finishing. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espressobin-board https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espre...
      - narrowrail 10y ago
        This looks like a great piece of HW with a Drobo mini attached. It could be a great daemon/cron/storage box with only one ethernet port, but w/ three it seems they are positioning to compete with the ERL3 from Ubiquiti which has a MIPS-based cpu from Brocade.
arahaya 10y ago
Thought this was a pied piper joke
bert2002 10y ago
Little bit expensive for just a box and a disk
- jospoortvliet 10y ago
  Well, it is cheaper than the pi-drive disk alone ;-)
narrowrail 10y ago
The software seems similar to sandstorm (sandstorm.io). This has a more integrated/opinionated app experience, rather than a software platform for apps of one's choosing? I can live with PHP, but Java is not something I willingly depend on. I suppose if I don't have to diddle with anything, I could live with Java.
jaclaz 10y ago
As a side note, AFAIK WD "USB only" disks may pose a problem (in case of issues) because they (or at least most of them) have a form of pass-through encryption, i.e. the data on the disk is encrypted and is decrypted on-the-fly by a chip on the PCB, if a component of the PCB fails, recovering the data becomes very, very difficult even if the hard disk works otherwise fine.

132 points by SunboX 10y ago

Wouldn't the drive performance be significantly inhibited by RPi's USB 2.0 interface? A small board with SATA or USB 3.0 would be much faster.

tdkl 10y ago
Yes it would, but a board who isn't inhibited by sharing the USB and network on the same bus and is supported like rPI wouldn't cost this kind of money. I'm quite surprised about the price (70€ with free shipping over EU), which is very tempting for someone who needs an external drive anyway. I hope there is more in the future to come in this area to bring the notion of home owned appliances instead of the cloud. Specially with IoT around the corner - those devices should communicate to a home server like this only.
- zokier 10y ago
  > I hope there is more in the future to come in this area to bring the notion of home owned appliances instead of the cloud. NAS boxes are relatively popular, and the major vendors are heavily leaning on making them the "all-in-one" home/soho servers as demonstrated by the wide range of applications available to them: https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/app_packages/all_app https://www.synology.com/en-global/dsm/app_packages/all_app https://www.qnap.com/en/app_center/ https://www.qnap.com/en/app_center/
jdietrich 10y ago
The Orange Pi Plus has SATA. https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/NEW-orange-pi-plus-Allwinner-A31s-Dual-Core-1GB-RAM-Open-source-development-board/1553371_32248189300.html https://www.aliexpress.com/store/product/NEW-orange-pi-plus-...
jospoortvliet 10y ago
yeah, the Pi isn't a super platform for this. We've made the box hardware-compatible with the oDroid C2 so people have an upgrade path - I understand Linux 4.10 will have out of the box oDroid C2 support so it shouldn't be too much after that that Canonical's Ubuntu Core will support it, too, and users can pick one up if they like.

motoboi 10y ago

No RAID for personal storage?!? What about a warning stating that you cannot keep your important stuff here unless you want to loose them in a undetermined moment in the future?

detaro 10y ago
personal storage of "important stuff" doesn't need RAID, it needs BACKUPS. RAID offers protection only against a comparatively tiny subset of risk factors.
- striking 10y ago
  I dunno, hard drives stop working basically at random in my experience. RAID is extremely helpful if your device is physically safe and not prone to infection. Plus, there's only so much you can back up to the cloud. I'd back up 125GB of personal pictures, but not 1.25TB of ripped Bluray media.
  - zokier 10y ago
    Local backups are a thing. Even just having second disk in the same system is much better than nothing (comparable to RAID1 but at higher level).
    - striking 10y ago
      Local backups are a pain. RAID is advantageous for multiple reasons.
- countingteeth 10y ago
  I don't know, but in my personal three decades of experience "inevitable disk failure" is not a "tiny subset of risk factors." RAID is huge defense for keeping "inevitable disk failure" from turning into "massive data loss." Do you, personally, test backup and restore of ALL of your data that you care about at acceptable loss intervals? Are you sure? And if your acceptable loss interval is "zero," then redundant synchronous storage across devices in one form or another is all there is. Backup is a total real-world solution to data loss like antivirus is a total real-world solution to malware and infosec.

kraftman 10y ago

So you're buying a case and a hard drive, you have to put it together yourself, and it only works with a raspberry pi 2? Seems like anyone interested enough to buy this would just do it themselves.

tdkl 10y ago
The price is very competitive, getting all the parts + cables and power brick would cost more.
- ac29 10y ago
  A 1TB enclosed external USB HD from Western Digital costs $60 (see NewEgg, Amazon, or whatever's relevant in your country). This costs $80. So, the extra $20 covers a SD card and a few screws to mount a Raspberry Pi (not included)? Doesn't seem competitive at all.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    I wrote that thinking the Pi is included (they wrote "compute board"), but it seems it's just the drive and case.
  - jospoortvliet 10y ago
    The kit to compare it to is the PiDrive kit from WD, which costs alone more than our kit WITH case. A normal external hard drive risks not working with a Pi. This 2.5" USB drive is optimized for low power usage, esp at startup and comes with a cable and charger which powers both the drive and Pi from a single cable. Obviously, if you are looking for an external USB drive for your computer, this is all not relevant. But if you want to use it with a Pi or a similar board, this kit is far superior.
s_q_b 10y ago
That was my first thought as well. I kept waiting for the magic that never came. However, if you look at the bottom it states that this case is a reference design, much like the Google phones, intended to be a platform upon which others can build new products.

Meph504 10y ago

I ordered one of these when western digital announced them a few months ago, it's basically a 1tb laptop hard drive. and a bulky plastic case. Firstly, the cable layout is frustrating, and requires bending the cables in such away that makes closing the case a pain. Secondly, the software is very unimpressive, I had the system just stop responding several times, the windows client is rather underwhelming as well. I just see no real advantages to say combining my own raspberry pi with a WD passport. Other than the plastic box.

vlunkr 10y ago
Is it cheaper if you buy it this way? That's the only advantage I see.
- cm3 10y ago
  From the description on website, it appears to not bundle the computer, just the case and hdd. So, if we consider the HDD to be 60EURO max, having compared to other WD blue mobile disks (couldn't find the exact model listed anywhere), then that leaves you with 10EURO for the case. The total of 70EUROs may or may not include shipping, I couldn't figure that out without trying to place an order. It's not cheap, but that pricing isn't expensive either. If it includes a Pi 2, then it's cheap.
  - tdkl 10y ago
    The Nextcloud box consists of the following parts: 1 TB USB3 hard drive from WDLabs Nextcloud case with room for the drive and a compute board It's worded weird, but I assumed the "compute board" is the PI.
    - cm3 10y ago
      Strictly speaking that doesn't say it includes one, just that there's room for one. But I hope you're right. I've looked at the PDF instructions and still wasn't any wiser.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

dammitcoetzee 10y ago

Oh god the bend radius on those cables. Also atrocious sinking and warping. This is the kind of stuff I have nightmares about. Please if you're thinking of building a hardware project and have never done it before at least consult someone like me. I'll look over anyone in SF's project and give a list of things to worry over for the price of a coffee, just don't do this.

ar0 10y ago
While I cannot judge on the merits of your recommendations (not being a hardware guy myself), I do want to point out that this is a project in collaboration with WDLabs (as in Western Digital), according to the website. "Have never done it before" would not be a description I would apply to Western Digital regarding hardware products. The website admits however, that this is more of a "reference device, meant to inspire and invite anyone to build their own", so I would not expect the most rugged quality. In any case, as you need to bring your own Raspberry Pi, it seems to be more of a product for tinkerers than for enterprise-strength reliability.
- dammitcoetzee 10y ago
  Well, I don't disagree with you, but I can add some merit to my recommendations. 1. Each cable has a bend radius recommended by the supplier. If this bend radius is exceeded (too small) then it is very unlikely that the cabling will function properly electrically, especially for high speed communications. Cross-talk, dropped packets, etc. If anything the supplier is off the hook for meeting their spec since it wasn't installed correctly. 2. The plastic insulation will take this for a while but two things happen to polymers with a constant stress on them. 2.a They suffer stress relaxation via creep. The long linked molecules will reach a new alignment over time. They will no longer be in their plastic range and settle in a new configuration. This could result in more crosstalk or even a complete insulation failure as a function of time. 2.b Flexible plastics typically slowly lose plasticity over time due to the breakdown of the plasticizer that made them flexible. (That nice new cable smell) Most cables have PVC made flexible due to these additives. If this box is warm due to the heat from the drive and pi, then it's entirely likely that the cable could further degrade under the constant strain and creep and fail. Causing not only thinning but brittle breaking of the jacket. It doesn't have to be visible breaking for it to stop working electrically. Basically you can't trust your wire anymore. It could work forever. It could fail randomly. It could just cause communication errors that are hard to trace. As for the box, they just used too much plastic and pushed the thing through the machine too fast without cooling. But then again, I am not an ultra expert on injection molding. It's an art. My recommendation would be "Have a sit down with your molder, these faults do not need to be."

voiceclonr 10y ago

Not a good idea. As a personal anecdote, I had my 1TB HP simplesafe drive crash and I lost lot of precious pictures from recent years [Before moving to cloud]. The drive was Western Digital and none of the recovery software worked. You run the risk of drive failures with these and also not easy to migrate data once data grows or hardware evolves.

DanBC 10y ago
> You run the risk of drive failures with these All drives fail. Any drive can fail at the worst time. You must have back ups, and you must test your back ups.
- voiceclonr 10y ago
  Agree. That's why I prefer to use cloud as they are replicated automatically.
  - countingteeth 10y ago
    "Use cloud," without more, isn't necessarily backup at all.
ksec 10y ago
That is why use Cloud as a backup. But have the box sit in between to speed up data delivery. I always wonder why this never have worked out. Most of today's Internet users aren't even running on 100Mbps. Why are we moving to all cloud? Why No physical box in between? For example Time Capsule that backups to iCloud.

taude 10y ago

Does this offer anything that the Lima product doesn't? [1] I bought a Lima, but never actually used it. [1] https://meetlima.com https://meetlima.com

alanbernstein 10y ago
Why didn't you use it?
- taude 10y ago
  I had an existing Synology NAS, and never ended up getting an external USB drive. And then I guess I was hoping some software would just come out for my NAS that would do something similar.
jospoortvliet 10y ago
1. it is open source so you can actually trust it 2. it is based on software used in serious enterprises so if you want more of it, you can get that 3. it has a big and healthy ecosystem of customers, contributors and apps so it isn't going anywhere

mikestew 10y ago

I'm trying to figure out what this buys me versus a Synology box running DS Cloud (Synology's "personal cloud" app). With a Synology NAS I get: * Data on my own box. * Remote access via the DS Cloud app on devices, or the web app. * RAID with an external backup drive. With Nextcloud, it looks like I get: * Data stored where ever I like, including my Synology NAS(?). * Some kind of remote access, and it's stored on the NextCloud(?). * On my own for backups, no RAID. * No idea on pricing. If it's dirt cheap, I guess maybe a Nextcloud is an option. But if it begins to approach the price of Synology's least expensive offers I fail to see the value.

jospoortvliet 10y ago
well it is way cheaper than any synology solution, plus that the whole stack is open source so you can actually trust that it does what it says it does. If you care about privacy and security, that is a plus. It also will probably be slower than most synology solutions and more manual work - we'd like to improve that of course but that means we need help as this is a community effort, not a commercial thing.

simosx 10y ago

The box is running Ubuntu Core, which fully uses "snaps" instead of the traditional .deb packages. There is a post that describes their experience of selecting and implementing with Ubuntu Core for this box, at https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/09/29/the-making-of-the-nextcloud-box/ https://insights.ubuntu.com/2016/09/29/the-making-of-the-nex...

joshmn 10y ago

Hosting vet checking in: Sorry but what's cloudy about this? No high-availability, no redundancy. I guess Nextserver just isn't as marketable.

chrisper 10y ago
It's just the software that is "cloudy." Nextcloud is not being used because of this product, but rather Nextcloud just also provides this box. Kind of like Nextcloud + this box = convenience, but you can just do Nextcloud without it.

e12e 10y ago

So, can anyone shed some more light on what "Nextcloud" (the software/OS part) actually is? As far as I can gather it's more or less a fork of owncloud by one of the owncloud maintainers, paired with ubuntu core, and turned into a kind-a-sorta groupware and file server? But for some reason lacking an ldap/kerberos/ad/directory server - so it can't be the only part of a small office network - you still need ldap/AD set-up? I'm not entirely sure I see the value proposition here.

scott00 10y ago
It's a very recent fork of ownCloud, so if you know what that is, most of your knowledge transfers. It's basically self-hosted Dropbox/Google Drive/OneDrive, with some initial support for other cloud-y things: web-based document/spreadsheet/presentation software and chat/call/video conference being the main two. The value proposition is all in the self-hosted part. If you have a problem with giving a third party access to all of your files, this is a possible alternative. If you trust Google/Microsoft/Dropbox with your files, your life will probably be a whole lot easier letting their massive engineering and ops teams manage servers and software for you. It's definitely not an all-in-one small office solution, there's no email app.
- jancborchardt 10y ago
  We do have an IMAP app for mail https://github.com/nextcloud/mail https://github.com/nextcloud/mail You can run that together with a Dovecot for example. It integrates nicely with Nextcloud Contacts for autocompletion and Files for attachments. Testing and contributions are very much welcome! :)
jancborchardt 10y ago
Just to add to what Scott said: One important part is that the Nextcloud Box is just a device running Nextcloud. It’s not the main product. :) We focus on developing the software, which is 100% open source and at https://github.com/nextcloud https://github.com/nextcloud (Disclaimer: I used to be Design Lead at ownCloud and moved to Nextcloud.)

bedros 10y ago

correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is a fork of owncloud owncloud is nothing but horrible, full of bugs and zero innovation when it comes to file sharing.

zakki 10y ago
Hi, Do you know any alternative for owncloud?
- bedros 10y ago
  personally, I use webdav; however there are a lot of good reviews of seafile if you want a true replacement of owncloud.
  - jospoortvliet 10y ago
    unless, of course, you care about security or a project that is, well, alive... There have been 1 or 2 commits in the last month so I wouldn't bet my data on it. But I'm hopelessly biassed, working for Nextcloud, so please check github for yourself when you pick a solution for your data - at least look at the pulse over the last week or month before you pick a solution. If you don't know it, here is ours: https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pulse https://github.com/nextcloud/server/pulse it shows you the activity in the project. For comparison, this is bad: https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/pulse https://github.com/haiwen/seafile/pulse Again, I'm biassed, so make your own conclusion, don't rely on mine. I'm just pointing the way.
jancborchardt 10y ago
Well, this is part of why we forked it to Nextcloud (disclaimer: I used to be Design Lead at ownCloud and moved to Nextcloud). We’re focusing a lot more on stability and innovation, and if you look at the Github statistics, you’ll see that our activity surpasses ownCloud’s by a magnitude.

ausjke 10y ago

Looked the document, and the real interesting thing is the split cable used internally, i.e. a cable that splits usb3-micro-typeB into a power-and-usb2, that cable seems neat, is it a customized one only for this product, or a generic cable that you can find on ebay? I happen to have RPI and the same WD USB3 hard drive here and with this cable I can try owncloud without the enclosure right away.

IgorPartola 10y ago

Here's the thing. If you want storage, you've got to use ZFS or be very brave and use BTRFS. RAID and single drive solutions are not going to cut it. Bit rot is a real thing and assuming you care about your data you want checksums and redundancy. If you don't want to think about it: set up a FreeNAS/NAS4Free appliance. If you do, build something slightly custom. To date, I know of no complaints maimed products that fit this criteria. It is frustrating, but family photos are not replaceable so don't take chances.

keypusher 10y ago
While this is likely true at the consumer level, it is not true at the enterprise level. Raid6 is used extensively, and the file hash is stored in metadata, separately. The files are walked periodically to detect and repair corruption. The same is done for parity. This has to be done with zfs too, via zfs scrub. I just don't think you can directly compare zfs with raid, as zfs is a filesystem and therefore implements some of the same things that other companies end up building on top of raid with their own custom filesystems.
- IgorPartola 10y ago
  I did not realize there were RAID implementations that did block level checksums. ZFS is both a file system and a block layer. You would use RAID + ext4 or ZFS. The block layer parts of ZFS are comparable to RAID and are superior in many ways, including the most important: checksums.

eltoozero 10y ago

So a hard drive, one with an onboard USB bridge no less, and a raspberry Pi. USB performance on Pi is garbage, and you're sharing your storage I/O with the network I/O since they're both USB prehiperals. This is a terrible idea.

ZenoArrow 10y ago
It's not a terrible idea in general, I personally think it's potentially a great idea, but like you I do think the Raspberry Pi was a poor choice for this use-case. Perhaps in the next revision they'll base it around something better suited, such as the ESPRESSOBin: http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/09/23/marvell-espressobin-board-with-gigabit-ethernet-sata-pcie-and-usb-3-0-to-launch-for-39-and-up-crowdfunding/ http://www.cnx-software.com/2016/09/23/marvell-espressobin-b...
- tdkl 10y ago
  Specs are impressive but > ESPRESSOBin will be launched on Kickstarter in the next few days. sigh
  - voltagex_ 10y ago
    It's almost done I think. I have high hopes for it Globalscale made great stuff with the Sheevaplug and Dreamplug.
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    The Kickstarter has already started, it's actually less than 24 hours away from finishing. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espressobin-board https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/874883570/marvell-espre...
    - narrowrail 10y ago
      This looks like a great piece of HW with a Drobo mini attached. It could be a great daemon/cron/storage box with only one ethernet port, but w/ three it seems they are positioning to compete with the ERL3 from Ubiquiti which has a MIPS-based cpu from Brocade.

arahaya 10y ago

Thought this was a pied piper joke

bert2002 10y ago

Little bit expensive for just a box and a disk

jospoortvliet 10y ago
Well, it is cheaper than the pi-drive disk alone ;-)

narrowrail 10y ago

The software seems similar to sandstorm (sandstorm.io). This has a more integrated/opinionated app experience, rather than a software platform for apps of one's choosing? I can live with PHP, but Java is not something I willingly depend on. I suppose if I don't have to diddle with anything, I could live with Java.

jaclaz 10y ago

As a side note, AFAIK WD "USB only" disks may pose a problem (in case of issues) because they (or at least most of them) have a form of pass-through encryption, i.e. the data on the disk is encrypted and is decrypted on-the-fly by a chip on the PCB, if a component of the PCB fails, recovering the data becomes very, very difficult even if the hard disk works otherwise fine.