Lenovo/EMC 2-bay PX2-300D ($99.99), IX2 ($59.99) and 4-bay IX4-300D ($109.99) NAS units @ Newegg (Sold by Centrix Intl.)

[VirtualLarry]

Now have a PX2-300D for $99, diskless. It has a screen, and what appears to be hot-swap caddies.
Unfamiliar otherwise with this unit, and what firmware features it may have. Anyone care to comment? No reviews yet @ Newegg.
Sold by the same seller as the other Lenovo/EMC units, "Centrix International".

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

Lenovo EMC™ PX2-300D Network Storage is a high performance business class desktop device, ideal for small-to medium-sized businesses and distributed enterprise locations like branch and remote offices, for content sharing and data protection.

OVERVIEW
• Supports up to 50 users
• Intel® Atom Dual Core CPU, 2 GbE NICs
• Maximum storage capacity of up to 8TB (2 x 4TB)
• Gigabit Ethernet connectivity
• Easy 3-Step Setup -- Simply plug into your router, power on, and download the integrated LenovoEMC Storage Manager software
• Anywhere in the world access with embedded cloud storage technology solutions
• Built-in Mindtree SecureMind video surveillance VMS solution, with one free camera license
• Built-in Milestone Arcus video surveillance VMS solution, with two free camera demo licenses
• User friendly web-based management interface; web interface accessible in 17 supported languages
• Supports PC, Mac, and Linux clients
• Compatible with most common backup software, web browsers, media devices, and computers

SPECIFICATIONS
• Desktop, compact, form factor
• Intel Atom Dual Core D525 CPU @ 1.8GHz
• 2GB DDR3 Memory
• 2 x 3.5” Hot-Swap SATA-II Hard Disk Drive Bays
• Server Class Easy-Swap Hard Drives with support for SSD drives
• JBOD, RAID 0, RAID 1
• 2 x RJ45 10/100/1000Mbps (GbE) Ethernet ports
• LAN standards: IEEE 802.3, IEEE 802.3u
• 1 x USB 3.0 port, 2 x USB 2.0 (to connect external HDD, UPS, Bluetooth dongle)
• Power consumption – 20 Watts (min) - 40 Watts (max), 65 Watts for 1.5s (peak)
NOTE: These values represent a fully loaded device with the highest capacity HDD. Values may vary with other configurations.
• Acoustic noise – 29.3 dBA maximum
• User interface localized for English, French, Italian, German, Spanish, Brazilian Portuguese, Russian, Traditional Chinese, Simplified Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Arabic, Hebrew, Turkish, Swedish, Dutch, and Polish.
• Network File Protocols Supported: CIFS/SMB/Rally (Microsoft), NFS (Linux/UNIX), AFP/Bonjour (Apple), FTP, SFTP, TFTP, HTTP, HTTPS, WebDAV, Windows DFS, SNMP.

CERTIFICATIONS
• Windows® Server 2008 R2 and Windows Server 2012
• VMware® vSphere ESX 5.1 iSCSI and NAS
• Citrix® XenServer™ 5.5, 5.6 (w/ MPIO), iSCSI & NFS

CONTENTS
• LenovoEMC™ PX2-300D Network Storage, Diskless 0TB
• Ethernet cable
• Power supply
• Printed Quick Start Guide
• Software Download (with): LenovoEMC™ Storage Manager software, User Help Documentation


(Hmm, this one claims to have a dual-core Atom CPU. Might not be so bad. Maybe if they still have them at the beginning of next month, I'll grab one to experiment with. BTW, most likely, these are EOL units as well.)

---

Are you a human?

www.newegg.com

They have a 2-bay diskless for $59.99, and a 4-bay diskless for $109.99.

The 2-bay has a single Gigabit LAN port, the 4-bay has dual GigE LAN and a USB3.0 port.

I'm thinking of getting the 4-bay NAS unit, I already own several of the 2-bay units.

They're kind of useless to me now (upgraded my LAN to 2.5GbE/10GbE), but they were always reliable for me. They're SATAII. With updated firmware, the 2-bay takes as large as an 8TB WD Red NAS drive (in pairs), this may not be fully documented anywhere. I've not tried larger drives.

The firmware updates seem to be at an end, they were upgrading them faithfully every month or whenever there was a security issue discovered with the Linux-based code, but it appears that they are finally EOL. So, if you care about on-going support, these aren't for you.

They are fairly full-featured, and include Transmission (web-based Torrent Client), you can just copy the .torrent files to a directory, and it will automagically start downloading the files for you, you can check progress and control the client / seeding / etc., with a web page on the NAS. (For mass-downloading Linux ISOs.)

I've not dealt with this marketplace seller before that I know of, but from the pics, they appear to be new units.

Anyways, if you're new to NAS, and don't want to splash out a lot of money, and just want a place to back up your PCs and laptops, and share files on your LAN, one of these would likely be just about perfect for a "starter NAS unit". (I would also recommend QNAP, more full-featured, more updated, but also nearly 3-4X the price.)

 

[SamirD]

Wow, only 8-9MB/sec--that's too slow for me. Would work nice as a remote backup unit, but locally that would drive me nuts, lol.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Oh, BTW, that 8-9MB/sec is not true. That person must have had a 100Mbit/sec ethernet link somewhere in the chain, or something wasn't auto-negotiating gigabit.

Let me fire up one of mine, and I'll give you a CDM benchmark in a few minutes (on the 2-bay, with some 2TB Hitachi 5400RPM "CoolSpin" HDDs).

These are not the highest-performing drives, but you're right, it does appear that the NAS'es Marvell SoC/CPU is holding things back a little bit. I'm on the newest firmware, in RAID-1 (mirroring).

I don't know how slow the RAID-5 might be, on the 4-bay. It's possible, I suppose, for the write speed to be as low as 10MB/sec, but I still doubt that review. I think that it would be more around 20-30MB/sec at least, depending on drives.

Basically, you're not going to max out your GigE, but performance is close to respectable for price. (40MB/sec Windows File-copy writes, 70MB/sec Windows File-copy reads) (Edit: I haven't tried in RAID-0. When you first install it with drives, it will default to creating a RAID-1 array, but you can do a "Factory Reset", and then create a RAID-0 array if you want to. I presume that would give better performance.)

But as a low-power Torrent client/seedbox, on a fast internet connection, this thing will save you $$$ on electric bill, versus leaving your high-powered gaming rig running all of the time. (Unless you're mining on it or something.)

 

[SamirD]

That looks much better. Nice boxes! They're the same speed as my Intel ss4200-e units.

Do you think they'll take drives larger than 2TB? If so, these can be a really cheap large nas.

 

[SamirD]

So after a little more research on these there's a reason why they're similar to the ss4200-e--they actually run the next version of the same software.

These are also known as an Iomega product as well, and seem to have a 6TB confirmed drive size limit, although I'm sure that like on the ss4200-e, it's a software limit and not hardware. Unfortunately, I don't think you can run something else like freenas on the Lenovo like you can on the ss4200-e.

Pretty interesting product at a decent price point. If their 2 drive model had dual ethernet, I probably would bite.

Now, I remember one thing that was not good about these when compared to the ss4200-e--the firmware is actually on the drives, so if something happens to that part of the drive, you can actually lose the whole volume without the drives or data being touched. This wasn't an issue on the ss4200-e because it had a separate storage module for the nas software/firmware.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Pretty interesting product at a decent price point. If their 2 drive model had dual ethernet, I probably would bite.

Not sure what dual GigE would get you, with only the 2-drive model. Even in RAID-0, I don't know if there would be that much benefit.

If I get the motivation, I might do a "factory reset", and try out RAID-0 on a 2-drive unit. For science. That requires waiting for it to do a surface-wipe of 2x2TB 5400RPM HDDs, though, before I can re-setup the RAID, I think.

I can see the benefit of dual GigE possibly, if you bought the 4-bay model, and used RAID-0 with four drives. I could definitely see it then.

But these units don't support SMB multi-channel, to my knowledge.

Edit: I was simply able to change the RAID arrangement from RAID-1 to RAID-0 with a drop-down, followed by a dialog box, in which I had to check a box and then click "Apply". It warned that it would delete all data.

Note that the default set of shares wasn't re-created in doing this, and even though I ran the "Setup" applet, they still didn't show up.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Do you think they'll take drives larger than 2TB? If so, these can be a really cheap large nas.

I put 2x8TB WD Red 5400 SATA6G 3.5" HDDs in one of them, not sure what firmware. I believe that with the newer/newest firmware(s), you are limited to a 16TB (net) volume size.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Here's all the applet thingies (*really technical name for them) that come with this NAS unit, or mine, anyways.

I tried RAID-0, write speeds went from 40MB/sec to 45-47MB/sec at most, while dropping down at times to 33MB/sec.

Read speeds were unchanged.

I then tried setting the disk write cache to "Enabled", rather than "Enabled on UPS" (I'm not connected with the data cable to the UPS, even though the NAS is on a UPS). No change.

So yeah, looks like a limitation of the SoC. Unless there's a more powerful SoC in the 4-bay unit, I doubt that one's any faster, and dual GigE are probably wasted on it.

Still, for a cheap Torrent box, or basic file backup box, these aren't bad. They do have a bunch of neat features in the firmware, as you can see.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm not saying that these are great NAS units, but their firmware is robust, more-or-less, if with an older type of UI, unlike the "desktop metaphor" UI used by QNAP and Asustor. They're older, and slower (as I've shown). But this deal makes them fairly cheap. (Contemporary QNAP TS-251+ 2-bay NAS is $299! This on is $59.99 for the 2-bay. And $109.99 for the 4-bay.)

The other down side is, they won't be getting any future security updates to the firmware, as they are pretty-well EOL. Which means that you probably DO NOT want to use them as an internet-accessable "cloud" system (*). (*Torrenting excepted.)

Edit: It may seem like I'm "pushing" these, but I'm really not. I have no association with Newegg or the seller.

I just have lots of happy memories of one of my first NAS units, and using it to download Linux ISOs via Transmission, fairly effortlessly, and seeding them over my FIOS Gigabit connection to give back to the Linux community. (Did 4TB of transfers at peak one month.)

Edit: And I DO think that these are "a deal". I paid $75 shipped ea. for three of the 2-bay units from some guy in Hungary (the country), over ebay, and that was the cheapest that I could find them for a few years ago, and I thought that I got a steal then, as they were supposedly NEW. (I don't think that these, being SATAII units, have actually seen production in a decade or so. It's a small miracle that the firmware updates continued as long as they did.)

Edit: So, that said:

PROs:
Cheap! (And I think, "New")
Decent pedigree (Lenovo/EMC, and before them, I think, Iomega)

CONs:
Outdated
No future firmware updates ("EOL")
Middle-of-the-road GigE performance, only SATAII drive interface performance
16TB net volume size limit (which realistically limits you to 4-6TB HDDs for the 4-bay unit, and 8TB HDDs for the 2-bay unit, I think)

 

[BenJeremy]

I'm in for the 4 bay model. Populating it with 4 HGST 4TB Refurb HDDs. I suspect the speed issues are just that platter drives are slow. Doubling the speed with RAID0 isn't enough to hit 1GB/sec. I have two Linux servers in my basement, serving up 8x2TB drives each on RAID0+1 for my media collection (TV shows and movies). The new NAS will give me some breathing room.
So as I understand it, the IX models are limited to a 16TB volume, but the PX models can handle much larger? Just thinking if I wanted to shuck some 16TB drives into a 4 bay PX unit somewhere down the road as a backup for all my servers.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, when I get some money, I'm thinking of possibly trying out a 4-bay unit as well, if they still have them.

I picked up, some months ago on ebay, some refurb WD MyBook 4TB Desktop External HDDs, which are pretty easy to shuck. (Less easy to re-use the enclosures, there's some YT vids on modifying them, desoldering a couple pins on an EEPROM or something.)

 

[VirtualLarry]

Something to Note: These apparently store the firmware ON THE DRIVES THEMSELVES.

Also, pulling the drives, while the unit is in an initialized and usable state, may be a really bad idea, you can't reset the NAS unit WITHOUT THE DRIVES IN PLACE.

If you want to upgrade your NAS unit's drives, you need to BACKUP THE NAS'es contents, and then FACTORY-RESET THE NAS, SELECTING TO POWER-OFF WHEN DONE.

That is the ONLY time, after it has powered-down after a factory reset, that you can pull the drives, without it severely complaining and refusing to function without its initialized drives.

As I understand it.

 

[BenJeremy]

Something to Note: These apparently store the firmware ON THE DRIVES THEMSELVES.

Also, pulling the drives, while the unit is in an initialized and usable state, may be a really bad idea, you can't reset the NAS unit WITHOUT THE DRIVES IN PLACE.

If you want to upgrade your NAS unit's drives, you need to BACKUP THE NAS'es contents, and then FACTORY-RESET THE NAS, SELECTING TO POWER-OFF WHEN DONE.

That is the ONLY time, after it has powered-down after a factory reset, that you can pull the drives, without it severely complaining and refusing to function without its initialized drives.

As I understand it.

The diskless unit, by its very nature, could not do this. It does store (base) firmware on the system board, however, I'm sure all updates are done on the drive configuration.
I got my unit yesterday, and installed 4 Hitachi 4TB Refurb server drives (~$50 on eBay) for a 16TB RAID0 volume. It will default to a RAID5, so if you aren't concerned with the redundant drive insurance (I wasn't for this configuration), you'll need to configure that.
I'm updating the firmware at the moment, kind of a complicated process, as I had to download the file on a PC, then upload it through the web interface, then apply it.

Be aware, there was a bad exploit on its web-facing "personal cloud" API. What does that mean? It means don't provide access through your router's firewall (NAT table) to the personal cloud service on this box, because hackers were able to erase files and write their own data to your NAS. The scam was to delete all your files and pretend that they had only "hidden and encrypted" your files for ransom - pay the ransom per the details int he note they left, and you'd just say bye bye to our money, because the files were lost forever. The attackers could not READ your data, only delete it/overwrite it.

They might have fixed this in the latest firmware, I did not dig that deeply into the details.

I haven't run any speed tests yet. I also plan on hooking up a bunch of external drives, because I have them, and I need something to easily share the data on my home/office network. I was going to use a RasPi, but that project was on hold when this came along.

UPDATE: My unscientific test, copying files from my downloads folder (2TB NVMe PCIex4 stick) to the NAS over GBe ran 23GB of data over to the new box in 16:27, or around 25MB/s. Not the fastest write times, but that's what it is.
The Transmission Torrent Client would have been nice to use, but since it does not support proxies, it is useless to me. I won't ever expose myself to torrent sniffing copyright trolls (long story short, got a notice after downloading a game disc image for a friend who had a valid key, but lost the disc). I was hopeful, and this is disappointing. :|

 

[VirtualLarry]

Be aware, there was a bad exploit on its web-facing "personal cloud" API. What does that mean? It means don't provide access through your router's firewall (NAT table) to the personal cloud service on this box, because hackers were able to erase files and write their own data to your NAS. The scam was to delete all your files and pretend that they had only "hidden and encrypted" your files for ransom - pay the ransom per the details int he note they left, and you'd just say bye bye to our money, because the files were lost forever. The attackers could not READ your data, only delete it/overwrite it.

They might have fixed this in the latest firmware, I did not dig that deeply into the details.

I did not know this, thanks for the heads-up!

 

[BenJeremy]

I did not know this, thanks for the heads-up!

I have OwnCloud set up on one of my Linux boxes anyway, and they can share out the shares from this NAS if I get it set up correctly (already sharing out network shares from another server on my network)

 

[VirtualLarry]

The Transmission Torrent Client would have been nice to use, but since it does not support proxies, it is useless to me. I won't ever expose myself to torrent sniffing copyright trolls (long story short, got a notice after downloading a game disc image for a friend who had a valid key, but lost the disc). I was hopeful, and this is disappointing. :|

TBH, I've never ever heard of a "Torrent Proxy". Most people, I suppose, use VPNs? Why wouldn't that work in this case?

 

[VirtualLarry]

I have yet to even open my 4-bay IX4 unit, but they now have a 2-bay PX2-300D, I think it is, for $99. Looks like a step-up from the IX family? Anyone familiar with them? Are they faster? (Ok, a potato is faster than the IX family NAS units, but still...)

Edit: Hey, they have some 4-bay and 6-bay PX units up too, for $200 and $240. Not too shabby. Might pick up one of them. A 6-bay Synology is like $550-600, I think. Granted, the PX series is probably EOL too, which is a pretty major down-side. I just want a local backup server, with plenty of drives.

Edit: Anyone know if the PX series, having an Intel Atom CPU, is "hackable", or can otherwise take a 3rd-party NAS OS installation somehow? That would make these units REALLY interesting.

 

[mikeford]

I bought one of the ix2 couple years ago when Tigersomething had them on clearance. I put in 2x 3TB WD and while it runs a bit hot to my thinking, its been 24/7 without issue.

Last I looked, a day ago maybe, sell had 23 of these left and wanted $13 shipping, at least through newegg marketplace. I looked on their direct site, but didn't go far enough to see the shipping cost, which is never a good sign.

I am curious about these PX units, but tempted to add a duplicate same as I have now IX2 and use it strictly as a mostly off, on just to mirror my original IX2. Holding off on the chance of free shipping.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Yeah, when I snagged my IX4 a few weeks ago, I managed to get it for $109 FS from Newegg/Centrix Intl. I would hold out for that again.

But I'm really tempted to try out a $240 6-bay PX6-300D, but it says max array size 24TB, that's only 6x 4TB HDDs. Surely, there must be the ability to use 8TB HDDs by now? Need to research that.

Also not sure if I would want to run RAID-5 of 5+1, or RAID-6 of 4+2, or RAID-5 of 4+1+hotspare.

 

[mikeford]

Biggest issue, these came out in 2012, and my "guess" is Lenovo is getting rid of old stock they maybe kept around for warranty replacements. Anybody get one of these and register it on Lenovo to see what the warranty status is? Looking on Ebay the seller is only about 20 miles away from my house, fast shipping maybe, little else I think.

My cheap side thinks another IX2 is a no brainer, my inner nerd wants a PX4 and is busy thinking up reasons why its the "smart" choice. Despite the age it "appears" the PX4 is still supported with recent activity on the Lenovo forums, and it is a serious step up product, LCD display, hot swap bays etc etc.

Manuals etc are still available on the Lenovo site, not clear to me so far what the difference is between PX4 300d and 400d.

 

[mikeford]

Lenovo site drive spec doc, last updated 2015, shows 6TB WD drives supported in the PX4, I didn't check the PX6 spec.

 

[VirtualLarry]

my inner nerd wants a PX4 and is busy thinking up reasons why its the "smart" choice. Despite the age it "appears" the PX4 is still supported with recent activity on the Lenovo forums, and it is a serious step up product, LCD display, hot swap bays etc etc.

Manuals etc are still available on the Lenovo site, not clear to me so far what the difference is between PX4 300d and 400d.

Yeah, not to mention, the Intel Atom CPU, which is also a serious step up from whatever non-Intel CPU is in the IX series. (Marvell? MIPS architecture? I don't think it's new enough to be ARM.)

 

[BenJeremy]

Lenovo site drive spec doc, last updated 2015, shows 6TB WD drives supported in the PX4, I didn't check the PX6 spec.

I think the issue with the 300 series is that the maximum volume size is 16TB. For example, my 4 bay NAS can handle 2 8TB drives, but adding a third would be useless, since it would not be able to create a 24TB volume.

I set mine up with 4 4TB Hitachi refurbs, and it's working nicely. 4TB drives aren't too bad on price points, either (at least not for refurbs, about $50 each). I'd love to be able to stuff larger drives for a bigger volume, but these are slow units... this is strictly for backup/archival storage for my network.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I think the issue with the 300 series is that the maximum volume size is 16TB.

The PX6-300D specs said something about a 24TB volume size limit.

 

[mikeford]

I found a notice that all of the different IX and PX are EOSL, end of service life, sales, support, upgrades from Lenovo as of .... 3/31/2020, so I assume no warranty beyond sellers 30 days or whatever.
IX is the consumer line, PX the business line, which used to sell for about double the price. PX gets the Intel Atom, 300 series older D525 CPU @ 1.8GHz with 2GB RAM , 400 series is about 2 years newer with a D2701 CPU @ 2.13GHz 2GB 1600MHz DDR3, esata port, HDMI. Doesn't look like they made a PX2 in the 400 series.

Px6 and PX4-400r were both advertised with 24TB, but I haven't found "good" info otherwise, only related question on forum never got an answer or follow up.