Level1Reviews: Thecus W2810 Pro | Level One Techs

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This is a companion discussion topic for the original entry at https://level1techs.com/video/level1reviews-thecus-w2810-pro
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Its not easy to find places to buy most thecus products...

Humm it seems that the N2810 Pro is the same thing but with Thecus OS. The rear IO picture on the website is the same for them, the case screws are indexed the same it has to be the same picture. There is a plus version that lacks the DisplayPort and SPDIF, but gives you a serial port.

Hi Wendell

On Linux I can do network bonding rather easy supporting LB modes that don't require specific switch support either. Is that worth a mention or do you see specific obstacles for this solution that don't make it worthwhile to mention?

What's the config? and performance you're getting? Without setting up LACP on the switch, I've never had much luck with that actually doing any good. Do things like e.g. ssh work 2x as fast with dual bonded gigabit?

Samba 4.4+ has experimental multichannel support but some edge cases still cause data corruption.

To achieve the same level of simplicity as described in the video I'm definitely considering plain bonding using round robin, no LACP.

I set it up a while ago to speed up fast ethernet connectivity I had between 2 floors - realizing too late the interconnectivity between both floors was not Gigabit yet but fast ethernet as well, doh! Long story short: I now have 2 systems with dual Gigabit ethernet, and I want to try it again (hence my question ;-)) once I get the interconnection done properly.

This article http://louwrentius.com/achieving-450-mbs-network-file-transfers-using-linux-bonding.html explains how VLANs were needed to get the speed increase and seems in line with your experience. This is no longer a "just works" setup though so yeah, now you got me doubting.

As always thanks for the feedback, I'll make sure to report back once I have a working setup!

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Crossover cables and bonding or bonding via two cheap switches instead of vlans would work too. But boy that's weird.

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Yep, I think you nailed it.

My previous desktop had fast ethernet connections and as I assumed the current switch (obsolete material but unfortunately older than I thought, should have checked properly first) to be Gigabit I tried bonding. Super easy to set up but it now does appear the speed benefits get "overselled" a bit.

My YouTube comment because well not sure you read that ....

"Just when I understood some of what was being said I then ran into something I had no clue about. Anyway I still enjoyed watching the video and there were things in it that mentioned terms and hardware that I wanted to learn more about like settings for a router and similar to this file sharing server I really would like to understand file sharing for two computers hooked to a router and using Windows 7 64 bit. I have had shared file serving set up before on multiple pcs but keeping track of these keys or whatever it gave was a pain in the butt and sometimes when I tried the key given it didn't recognize it. Anyway this device here is not something I really would need as I just want my pcs to share things between them without being attached to something else. Finally I just got to say I see people in the comments saying how much they enjoyed it because it really was informative and was something up their alley and I am glad that Wendell you now have more time to spend focusing on videos where you talk about what you really want to talk about. Best of luck in the future L1."

Wendell, do you know if you can change the OS to what ever you want?

Sure can, but grab the Linux version of the hardware to save a few bucks if you intend to do that

Wheres the best play to buy them...? it is slim pickings on amazon.

Windows version of the Pro
Linux version of the Pro.
Out of stock Provantage link for the Linux Pro.

Linux version of the Plus.
Provantage link for the Linux Plus.

Is it possible to get two of these running in parallel to mirror its data? Kind of do an off site separate backup copy to back up essential data.

Storage spaces, dfsr and robocopy can all do this depending on how you want to approach it

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Currently we have onsite and cloud backup just looking to augment it cause we need to back up some data for up to 7 years and we have had to change cloud backups twice now. Make a backup of a backup if that makes sense. We were doing it the dropbox way at first but then space amassed to ~ 200GB so we looked at a more permanent online solution for as much data as possible and moved to crashplan for business.

Do robocopy I'd say. If you have a billion files and this is a backup job of mostly unchanging archive files look into an open source until called integrit. You can. Build a script that will md5sum all your files and email you if one character changes. It's great for detecting bitrot in archive replicas. If you are dealing with lots of files that mostly do the change that is.

Robocopy can be configured to copy of my what's changed so not much has to go over the wire.

The bonus overview of Windows Server is appreciated. I'm a bit of a NAS noob, but I suppose we all start somewhere.