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.)

[mikeford]

Sad bit is that after a good 3 hrs digging for info, I am still at the flip a coin point between a second IX2 or the PX4-400D, each has good reasons to support it, almost tempted to get one of each so I don't have to decide.

 

[VirtualLarry]

I'm getting a check in a couple of days, I might just grab that PX6-300D. I don't think Newegg had a PX6-400D available, did they? I wouldn't mind the faster CPU. But six bays in a respectable (if EOL) NAS, for $240 (diskless)? That's like a Yowza price-point for me. (2-bay QNAP current models are more expensive that that.)

I'm curious, if you came across anything in your travels and digging on these NAS units, if one could replace the firmware with something like FreeNAS, unRAID, or something 3rd-party, maybe a Debian Linux build and just use MDADM, although I'm not personally that familar.

I really want one of those 8/10-bay Asustor units, with the (dual?) 10GbE-T ports on them, but those are like $800 or so.

I would be willing to take a chance, on getting the PX6-300D, installing a temp HDD, flashing the firmware to newest, and then doing a factory-reset, pulling the HDD (the only way to start fresh with new drives on the IX models, maybe not so on the PX), and then installing six WD 8TB Red drives (have to pick up a couple more), and see if it can handle an 6x8TB, or 48TB (raw) array size. Probably RAID-5, maybe RAID-5 across 5 drives, with a hot spare.

 

[mikeford]

I was ready to buy the PX4-400D, and signing into my Newegg acct was such a mess it soured me on completing. I use messy long passwords and the signin doesn't allow paste.

IX was out in I think 2010, PX 300 in 2012, and 400 in 2014, something like that. All of them are old for a PC device, but I think the 400 has more than a few technical advantages. Max volume size concerns me that 16TB might be a hard limit, and that is before considering the cost of drives.

Given the current lock down economy, and watching sales on ebay, I don't think the deal is about to poof. Better odds it gets better maybe with free shipping. Lots of options in managing software I think, but I'd say replacing the firmware is a no go.

Don't recall seeing it in this thread, but Dell bought EMC, which may be the reason for end of support. If I end up eventually buying one, grabbing all the downloads off the Lenovo site asap would be wise.

More I think about it, more buying exactly what I want seems like the smart move.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Given the current lock down economy, and watching sales on ebay, I don't think the deal is about to poof. Better odds it gets better maybe with free shipping.

I agree. OTOH, once they're gone, they're probably gone, as far as getting one of these families of NAS units "New", for a reasonable price. (Closeout price)

I did get an IX4 4-bay unit, for $110 shipped. Still haven't opened it. Hope that I didn't make a mistake, if it truly has a 16TB volume limit. Plus the lack (relatively) of performance in terms of transfer speeds. The IX family was never great in that dept.

But it is (or was) "stupid cheap" for a workable 4-bay NAS, around $100. "New" even. But I wonder if I was "stupid" to even buy something that old, and EOL. I mean, heck, the drive interface is SATAII. Not SATA6G.

Shrug. Maybe I'll pawn off one of my new (Euro-version) IX2-DL units on a friend. I keep trying to get him interested in networking, 3rd-party router firmwares, and NAS units, for his backup storage. He doesn't seem that motivated to step out of his comfort zone, and learn those things, just yet. But I have some faith that he will, eventually. He learned how to build his own PCs, and taught himself Linux, so he's far from stupid. He just doesn't "see the light" of the "power of NAS" yet. Perhaps when he gets multiple PCs and laptops running, and sees the benefit of having a whole-LAN solution for a backup destination, and allowing them to run automagically to the NAS, that he'll change his mind.

Or possibly, I'll get a client someday that needs a cheap starter NAS units for backup duty, and doesn't want to splash out for a $400-500 4-bay QNAP, plus 4x $100 for some 4TB WD Red NAS drives, or $230 ea., for some 8TB NAS drives.

(I personally buy the WD EasyStore units from BestBuy on ebay, and shuck them. If they don't have warranty, I don't care. They're cheap enough, usually, to obtain that way, that you can simply buy an extra one, for what you would pay for "bare drive, with warranty" price on Newegg for WD Reds.)

I've also found, occasionally, WD themselves on ebay, selling factory refurb external desktop HDDs, and shucking those as well. SUPER-cheap. ($60 for 4TB.) With RAID-5 or RAID-1 for redundancy, I don't worry so much about individual drives failing.

 

[mikeford]

Part of deciding to wait is that backup is a moving target. I bought one of the Slickdeals 2TB usb slim seagates and it arrived today. Its tiny, size of an old audio cassette, was made last month and comes with well supported software, and cost $45. Maybe some of the big Lenovo PX boxes like the 12 will show up cheap?

My IX2 bought two years ago has 2x 3TB WD, but I've only moved about 600GB on to it off my media pc which has a total of 8 or 10 TB and is about 2/3 full of unsorted, not ready for the NAS stuff.

Its distasteful to be a vulture, but hard times, lots of restructuring are going to happen for the rest of the year, better to have cash than old hardware that was cheap at the time, but months later is still in the box.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Its distasteful to be a vulture, but hard times, lots of restructuring are going to happen for the rest of the year, better to have cash than old hardware that was cheap at the time, but months later is still in the box.

Yeah, tell me about it.

 

[mikeford]

I'm curious about the warranty status on these, would you mind checking the Lenovo site to see what it shows for the IX4 you have?

 

[Lanyap]

I thought I posted the direct link to Centrix earlier in this thread but apparently I didn't. I don't know if there is a difference in price or shipping. I don't have a NAS but have been thinking about getting one. I used to order Dell parts from Centrix back in the day. They don't have the parts inventory that they used to.

Storage Devices, Solid State Drives, Hard Drives, m.2 SATA

Storage Devices, SSD Solid State Drives, HD Hard Drives, m.2 SATA. Consumer electronic and computer component storage devices.

www.centrix-intl.com

 

[chiquito3]

Hello guys. I wonder if any of you know about anywhere where I could find some support for the Lenovo IX4-300d and PX4-400d?

 

[BenJeremy]

Hello guys. I wonder if any of you know about anywhere where I could find some support for the Lenovo IX4-300d and PX4-400d?

Um, Lenovo's site? Yes, the 300 series is EOL just like, a week ago, but they still released a new firmware for it.

If anybody has the 400 series, can you tell us if it supports HDDs larger than 4TB? Specifically, how large of a volume does it support? The 300D series seems to be limited to 16TB volume size in the 4-disk model, 24TB on the 6 disk model. You can apparently use a 5TB drive, but the volume size is limited (but you'll get RAID Parity). In an ideal world, I'd like to know if it's possible to shuck some 12TB or 14TB drives and stick them in a 4-disk unit and do RAID0 with the 400D series.

 

[chiquito3]

I have them both. The PX4-400d and the IX4-300d. I'm only using the PX4 as media storage and the IX4 is new in the box. Might sell it.

 

[mikeford]

No REAL firm answer on max drive size, several questions open in the Lenovo forums, but the supported drives list includes 6TB. What we don't know is if that is only in one of the RAID arrangements with 16TB total max.

Question I would ask is how wise would it be to spend three times as much for the drives as you do for a NAS that is 7 years old or so. What makes the deal tempting to me is the balance between decent used 4TB drives around $50 each and $200 for a new in the box high quality NAS that supports 4 of them. That even leaves open waiting for deals on new full warranty WD drives for $100 or more total.

 

[VirtualLarry]

There's a guy on FS/FT @Lordhumungus with a bunch of drives for sale right now, including many WD Red 8TB units. If the IX4-300D could take them...

 

[BenJeremy]

No REAL firm answer on max drive size, several questions open in the Lenovo forums, but the supported drives list includes 6TB. What we don't know is if that is only in one of the RAID arrangements with 16TB total max.

Question I would ask is how wise would it be to spend three times as much for the drives as you do for a NAS that is 7 years old or so. What makes the deal tempting to me is the balance between decent used 4TB drives around $50 each and $200 for a new in the box high quality NAS that supports 4 of them. That even leaves open waiting for deals on new full warranty WD drives for $100 or more total.

Well, if I'm going to spend $500 or more for a diskless NAS, I'll just get a nice case, basic Ryzen barebones and an SAS/SATA RAID card - I've already built two systems with 8 2TB drives in each. Running full Linux (administrating using WebMin), I can do a lot more, as well..

I mean, a Synology box has some appeal, but is it worth a $300~800 premium just to be able to plug in the drives and go with minimal setup? If I could spend $200 on a Lenovo box with massive drives as an array, and keep some other units just to back up the irreplaceable stuff, that's a much more attractive proposition.

 

[chiquito3]

Um, Lenovo's site? Yes, the 300 series is EOL just like, a week ago, but they still released a new firmware for it.

If anybody has the 400 series, can you tell us if it supports HDDs larger than 4TB? Specifically, how large of a volume does it support? The 300D series seems to be limited to 16TB volume size in the 4-disk model, 24TB on the 6 disk model. You can apparently use a 5TB drive, but the volume size is limited (but you'll get RAID Parity). In an ideal world, I'd like to know if it's possible to shuck some 12TB or 14TB drives and stick them in a 4-disk unit and do RAID0 with the 400D series.

I have the PX4-400d but I'm using 3TB drives. So I can't answer your question.

 

[mikeford]

The big issue is that EMC was sold to I think Dell, but that isn't holding me back from buying, I'm just hovering in vulture mode for prices to drop more or other options to appear.

 

[|JosephB17331|]

I bit on the PX6-300D; caveat being I picked it up through their Parallel Miner store (Parallel Miner is D.B.A. of Centrix International)
$20 lower than their Newegg/eBay listing

Lenovo EMC PX6-300D Network Storage 1.8GHz 6TB

Lenovo EMC PX6-300D Network Storage Server. High performance business class NAS and iSCSI network storage. Diskless up to 24TB storage.

www.parallelminer.com

 

[VirtualLarry]

I bit on the PX6-300D; caveat being I picked it up through their Parallel Miner store (Parallel Miner is D.B.A. of Centrix International)
$20 lower than their Newegg/eBay listing

Nice find! I was thinking of picking that one up too. Let us know how it goes with yours, if you're able to upgrade the firmware, and what the maximum drive size and volume size is, if you can find out, or if you use drives larger than 4TB in it.

I could utilize 4x WD Red 8TB NAS drives from one of my 4-bay NAS units, and pick up another couple of 8TB EasyStore external drives to shuck some more out of, and try out one with 6x 8TB, which would be 48TB "raw". That would be fairly impressive, in a nice RAID-6 configuration, for my needs.

 

[VirtualLarry]

Um, Lenovo's site? Yes, the 300 series is EOL just like, a week ago, but they still released a new firmware for it.

Do you have a link, for the firmware page for the PX4-300D and PX6-300D? I went looking today for the PX6-300D firmware, in anticipation of buying one, if my stimulus check comes in Mon., and I couldn't find any firmware. Have they taken down the site?

I also need firmware for the IX4 that I bought last month from Centrix Intl., although I have the firmware for the IX2-DL, on my drive, from a few months ago when I went to update mine. Not sure if the IX4 shares the same firmware, but it might.

 

[BenJeremy]

Do you have a link, for the firmware page for the PX4-300D and PX6-300D? I went looking today for the PX6-300D firmware, in anticipation of buying one, if my stimulus check comes in Mon., and I couldn't find any firmware. Have they taken down the site?

I also need firmware for the IX4 that I bought last month from Centrix Intl., although I have the firmware for the IX2-DL, on my drive, from a few months ago when I went to update mine. Not sure if the IX4 shares the same firmware, but it might.

I didn't save the link, just found it on a google search. I'm pretty sure it's just a security update, and the only security breach was the "cloud" server system - as long as you don't expose it through your router's firewall, it shouldn't be an issue.

 

[|JosephB17331|]

Firmware Version 4.1.414.34909 for px6-300d

I had this bookmarked as I had a PX6 on my watchlist for a few months now

 

[|JosephB17331|]

Nice find! I was thinking of picking that one up too. Let us know how it goes with yours, if you're able to upgrade the firmware, and what the maximum drive size and volume size is, if you can find out, or if you use drives larger than 4TB in it.

I could utilize 4x WD Red 8TB NAS drives from one of my 4-bay NAS units, and pick up another couple of 8TB EasyStore external drives to shuck some more out of, and try out one with 6x 8TB, which would be 48TB "raw". That would be fairly impressive, in a nice RAID-6 configuration, for my needs.

According to this - https://download.lenovo.com/lenovoemc/na/en/app/answers/detail/a_id/26012.html
( and at the time of draft 03/26/2015 - these are the drives "approved" for use in the px4-300d or px6-300d )

I see the WD60EFRX listed and the 4 and 5TB WD Red's also.. even the old school EZRX WD Greens up to 4TB (states not recommended to use with PX6)..

I'm going to assume the drives in that knowledge base document are only drives that they tested and would stamp their "approval" for use.

I don't have drives that size , so I won't be able to validate this upon it's arrival.

 

[BenJeremy]

According to this - https://download.lenovo.com/lenovoemc/na/en/app/answers/detail/a_id/26012.html
( and at the time of draft 03/26/2015 - these are the drives "approved" for use in the px4-300d or px6-300d )

I see the WD60EFRX listed and the 4 and 5TB WD Red's also.. even the old school EZRX WD Greens up to 4TB (states not recommended to use with PX6)..

I'm going to assume the drives in that knowledge base document are only drives that they tested and would stamp their "approval" for use.

I don't have drives that size , so I won't be able to validate this upon it's arrival.

The problem is that you can use drives that will give you a larger total size than 24TB on a P6, but it might still limit the usable space to 24TB, excepting the redundant space for RAID1/6... that is, you could have 6 5TB drives, but still only get 24TB an 5TB dedicated to parity/redundancy. This is what the IX4-300D does, only it limits it to 16TB... I can use 6TB drives, for example, but I'd be wasting 2TB of usable space and have 6TB of redundant parity drive on that RAID array. Setting the RAID to RAID0 would waste 8TB on that setup. I could put just two 8TB drives in the IX4, but why get an IX4 to do that and leave 2 bays open?

What's really strange, is that it's really an arbitrary limit. It's just an EXT4 partition, and the firmware's upper-level software is what limits it, not the file system or even the drivers embedded in the firmware.

It might be hackable... I saw something out there where somebody managed to install SABNZBD in the unit, but it would probably be tricky to make happen.

 

[|JosephB17331|]

PSA: My PX6-300D came with the latest firmware already on it

 

[|JosephB17331|]

This is what the seller informed me on eBay when I had asked if the PX6's were "new":

"

New message from: centrix-intl.com (95,368)

Hello, You would be surprised how often we get asked that question. We bought out all of Lenovo's EMC NAS stock here in the US and another warehouse over in the Netherlands. I have attached a few pictures of our warehouse stock. If you had any doubts that these were not new, the pictures should bring some assurance. Also we have a mixture of stock between US marketed products and European marketed products depending on the model you are interested in. There really is no need to worry about that though because we make sure to include the US plug or EU>US adapter tip to convert the cable for US outlet compatibility. Other than the included power cords being different, the specifications are identical between the EU and US marketed products. Please let me know if you have any other questions or if you are interested in a specific model/capacity.