6 ms·

I'm considering buying a NUC, attaching a big hard drive, and running syncthing on it. Good idea?

by NickHoff 9y ago

Teever 9y ago
A used ThinkPad T420 sells for about $200,has full driver support and will do anything you're looking for.
- peatmoss 9y ago
  Not to mention a built-in console and battery backup. That said, the NUC form-factor is nice if hiding it is important.
  - ashark 9y ago
    Laptops run 24/7 are (I would think) more likely than desktops to develop heat and wear related hardware faults, and I'd consider anything with a Lithium Ion battery plugged into power all the time in (presumably) a closet or other out-of-the-way place to be a fire hazard (see also: the aforementioned thermal issues, which would aggravate any issues with the battery)
    - OriginalPenguin 9y ago
      I don't see why an original battery would be a fire hazard. But many laptops will run without a battery just fine.
      - ashark 9y ago
        Yeah, but then no "built-in battery backup", which is part of claimed benefit of buying a used $200 laptop over rooting a $150 chromebox or $200-300 cheap PC.
    - Teever 9y ago
      You can run the laptop without a battery in it if you're worried about a fire.
riobard 9y ago
Some NUC models cannot house 2.5" SATA drives. For those that do, heat dissipation is an issue for 7200RPM drives. Plus max capacity of internal 2.5" hard drives is only 2TB, and depending on your use case it might or might not be sufficient. Your use case does not seem very computation-depending. Maybe a cheaper Raspberry Pi-based solution will also work.
- chrisper 9y ago
  If they cannot house 2.5" what size can they house then? Or did you mean 3.5"?
  - dijit 9y ago
    M.2 SSDs
    - chrisper 9y ago
      Oh wow. I must keep up with the times then!
      - astrodust 9y ago
        Those are PCI-e so they're substantially faster than their S-ATA equivalent.
        sevensor 9y ago
        Wow, chrisper isn't the only one who hasn't been paying attention. It's news to me too. These slot right into the bus, just like a hardcard! Everything old is new again.
  - unixhero 9y ago
    No he meant 2.5" Those models only have the "MacBook pro" "stick ssd" aka M2 SSD, which has a smaller form factor.
- NickHoff 9y ago
pletnes 9y ago
I have the impression that a cheap desktop (pentium?) PC is in fact cheaper and can house lots of 3.5" drives. Depends on how much space you have and how much storage you need.
brut 9y ago
I have never run syncthing but NUCs are a really nice product, sturdy and easily concealed (you can just screw them under a desk for example). Don't forget to buy memory and a hard drive for your unit though :) It doesn't come with any.
dade_ 9y ago
They work great: excellent NIC performance, reliable (2 years 24*7), good driver support on ubuntu and fedora.
jdboyd 9y ago
Since most NUCs don't take 3.5" HDs, I assume you mean attaching via USB3? You should be able to get a Thin Terminal device for about $100US with USB3.0 and gigabit ethernet and/or wifi. With a little shopping, you may even be able to get one with a low profile PCIe slot for similar money. A few examples of such machines are the HP T5740, t520 or t620. Dell/Wyse also should have acceptable options. Choosing a Thin terminal should cost far less than a NUC while being much more capable than a raspberry pi for not much more money (a raspberry pi 3 still needs a uSD card, a case, and an unusually powerful USB PSU).
- SEJeff 9y ago
  Most (many?) nuc users use the mini-pci flash storage devices. My NUCs (I have 3 of the skylake ones with 32G of ram) have 250G Samsung SSDs and those suckers just scream.
  - mitchty 9y ago
    I setup freebsd on mine and have the internal nvmex4 ssd's as caches and external usb3 jbod towers holding the spinning rust. Its nice, though the performance of usb3 is... less than optimal the fact that I can saturate gigabit ethernet means I don't care too much. Local compiles are crazy fast though.
    - SEJeff 9y ago
      That sounds like a pretty nice setup. I'm running a small (3 node hopefully 5 node in a few months) kubernetes cluster to dogfood things for my own home use. What do you run, some sort of a NAS with them?
      - mitchty 9y ago
        Yep, I just run nfsv3 and samba4 on it to share things out to my internal network. Its plenty fast for all my needs, though nfs over wifi is... slow in general its fast enough to not care a whole lot. I have a few bhyve linux vm's running that just go straight to the ssd's so they're silly fast with like 3g/s read speed or whatever. Its more than enough for all my home needs.
captn3m0 9y ago
It might be cheaper to get a mini-ITX build instead. It is larger than the NUC form-factor, but allows for much more expansion if you ever feel like it. I just did a build, and was considering the NUC, but it was prohibitively costlier for not a lot of improvement, other than the form factor.
toast0 9y ago
The Asus VIVO PC line is physically larger, but has some models with space for a 3.5" hard drive, and is still not terribly large.

I'm considering buying a NUC, attaching a big hard drive, and running syncthing on it. Good idea?

Teever 9y ago

A used ThinkPad T420 sells for about $200,has full driver support and will do anything you're looking for.

peatmoss 9y ago
Not to mention a built-in console and battery backup. That said, the NUC form-factor is nice if hiding it is important.
- ashark 9y ago
  Laptops run 24/7 are (I would think) more likely than desktops to develop heat and wear related hardware faults, and I'd consider anything with a Lithium Ion battery plugged into power all the time in (presumably) a closet or other out-of-the-way place to be a fire hazard (see also: the aforementioned thermal issues, which would aggravate any issues with the battery)
  - OriginalPenguin 9y ago
    I don't see why an original battery would be a fire hazard. But many laptops will run without a battery just fine.
    - ashark 9y ago
      Yeah, but then no "built-in battery backup", which is part of claimed benefit of buying a used $200 laptop over rooting a $150 chromebox or $200-300 cheap PC.
  - Teever 9y ago
    You can run the laptop without a battery in it if you're worried about a fire.

riobard 9y ago

Some NUC models cannot house 2.5" SATA drives. For those that do, heat dissipation is an issue for 7200RPM drives. Plus max capacity of internal 2.5" hard drives is only 2TB, and depending on your use case it might or might not be sufficient. Your use case does not seem very computation-depending. Maybe a cheaper Raspberry Pi-based solution will also work.

chrisper 9y ago
If they cannot house 2.5" what size can they house then? Or did you mean 3.5"?
- dijit 9y ago
  M.2 SSDs
  - chrisper 9y ago
    Oh wow. I must keep up with the times then!
    - astrodust 9y ago
      Those are PCI-e so they're substantially faster than their S-ATA equivalent.
      - sevensor 9y ago
        Wow, chrisper isn't the only one who hasn't been paying attention. It's news to me too. These slot right into the bus, just like a hardcard! Everything old is new again.
- unixhero 9y ago
  No he meant 2.5" Those models only have the "MacBook pro" "stick ssd" aka M2 SSD, which has a smaller form factor.
NickHoff 9y ago

pletnes 9y ago

I have the impression that a cheap desktop (pentium?) PC is in fact cheaper and can house lots of 3.5" drives. Depends on how much space you have and how much storage you need.

brut 9y ago

I have never run syncthing but NUCs are a really nice product, sturdy and easily concealed (you can just screw them under a desk for example). Don't forget to buy memory and a hard drive for your unit though :) It doesn't come with any.

dade_ 9y ago

They work great: excellent NIC performance, reliable (2 years 24*7), good driver support on ubuntu and fedora.

jdboyd 9y ago

Since most NUCs don't take 3.5" HDs, I assume you mean attaching via USB3? You should be able to get a Thin Terminal device for about $100US with USB3.0 and gigabit ethernet and/or wifi. With a little shopping, you may even be able to get one with a low profile PCIe slot for similar money. A few examples of such machines are the HP T5740, t520 or t620. Dell/Wyse also should have acceptable options. Choosing a Thin terminal should cost far less than a NUC while being much more capable than a raspberry pi for not much more money (a raspberry pi 3 still needs a uSD card, a case, and an unusually powerful USB PSU).

SEJeff 9y ago
Most (many?) nuc users use the mini-pci flash storage devices. My NUCs (I have 3 of the skylake ones with 32G of ram) have 250G Samsung SSDs and those suckers just scream.
- mitchty 9y ago
  I setup freebsd on mine and have the internal nvmex4 ssd's as caches and external usb3 jbod towers holding the spinning rust. Its nice, though the performance of usb3 is... less than optimal the fact that I can saturate gigabit ethernet means I don't care too much. Local compiles are crazy fast though.
  - SEJeff 9y ago
    That sounds like a pretty nice setup. I'm running a small (3 node hopefully 5 node in a few months) kubernetes cluster to dogfood things for my own home use. What do you run, some sort of a NAS with them?
    - mitchty 9y ago
      Yep, I just run nfsv3 and samba4 on it to share things out to my internal network. Its plenty fast for all my needs, though nfs over wifi is... slow in general its fast enough to not care a whole lot. I have a few bhyve linux vm's running that just go straight to the ssd's so they're silly fast with like 3g/s read speed or whatever. Its more than enough for all my home needs.

captn3m0 9y ago

It might be cheaper to get a mini-ITX build instead. It is larger than the NUC form-factor, but allows for much more expansion if you ever feel like it. I just did a build, and was considering the NUC, but it was prohibitively costlier for not a lot of improvement, other than the form factor.

toast0 9y ago

The Asus VIVO PC line is physically larger, but has some models with space for a 3.5" hard drive, and is still not terribly large.