Is a Plextor PX-NAS4 usefull for anything or is it just scrap metal?

[kae]

Can an old Plextor PX-NAS4 be used for anything besides a doorstop?

I bought this a long time ago (what a waste of money) and it has never been very reliable. I was never sure if the lack of reliability was the software or the hardware (probably both). Before I pitch the thing, I thought I would ask if anyone here has any experience with it and if it is worth anything other than scrap metal. Right now I can't get it to work for any connection except nfs with a Mac. It's out of compliance with the security changes to Windows networking. No updates (Thanks! Plextor).

I'm looking at the recommendation page for ideas for building my own NAS. I've got my eye on a Supermicro Chassis on Ebay. I'm going over the recommendations to make sure it will work well.

Thanks for any comments!

 

[Jailer]

Doorstop. It's such a low spec machine I don't even know what you could re purpose it for.

 

[jgreco]

The general problem with most prebuilt NAS units is that the company is looking to *sell* them, not *support* them. A company like Plextor who made a foray out of their comfort zone (optical products IIRC) would normally contract with some Taiwanese/Chinese OEM to build the hardware and provide the firmware. Ongoing firmware development to support more recent developments in Samba and security fixes and stuff like that are expensive, so what you really need is a company like QNAP or Synology who specialize in these products and are committed to making firmware for these devices for a long time, not because they're making any money off you, but rather because they need to keep developing their NASware for their newer product offerings. This is the same problem that exists with things like Smart TV's and other random IoT devices.

Now, the upside is that some of these devices can be hacked on and you may be able to update them to do specific things. Some stuff doesn't really rot over time. We have a pile of iomega StorCenter IX2's here that we use for bottom tier shared iSCSI storage. These devices only cost around $170 each back around 2012. LenovoEMC has actually just recently EOL'd firmware support for these, and that's only because the same firmware was running on a whole family of NAS devices they put out.