UmbrelOS hits ver.2.0 – How Much Different is it? UmbrelOS has always taken a slightly different route to most traditional NAS and home server operating systems, focusing heavily on simplifying self-hosting rather than exposing every possible configuration option to the user. That approach made it accessible, but it also left a number of gaps for […]

New ARM v9.2 Powered DIY NAS Revealed – The Minisforum N5R Minisforum has used IFA 2026 to reveal another addition to its growing NAS range, this time in the form of the N5R. At first glance, it follows the same general 5-bay desktop design language as the company’s other recent N5 systems, including the removable […]

Minisforum MS-01 SE Launched at IFA 2026 The Minisforum MS-01 SE is a lower-cost variation of the company’s established MS-01 mini workstation, first shown at IFA 2026 as a way to retain much of the original system’s compact workstation design while trimming back some of the more expensive hardware. Rather than replacing the MS-01 outright, […]

The New UGREEN HomeAgent Series Revealed UGREEN has spent the last few years building out its NAS range, but its latest announcement takes the company in a rather different direction. I was in Boston for the reveal of UGREEN HomeAgent, a new family of systems designed to bring local storage, AI processing, home surveillance and […]

A New and Easier Way to Mod Your Synology NAS Synology’s gradual shift towards business and enterprise users has changed what some home, enthusiast and homelab users can do with DSM, particularly when it comes to 3rd-party drives, SSDs, network adapters, hardware transcoding and other unofficial modifications. Community-developed scripts have helped restore or extend many […]

TrueNAS vs UnRAID – Which One Deserves Your Data? TrueNAS vs Unraid. Both can turn standard x86 hardware into a powerful NAS, application server and virtualisation platform, but neither approaches the job in quite the same way. More importantly, the question is not simply which platform has the longest feature list. It is which one […]

CWWK N150 2x10GbE 3x NVMe 6 Bay NAS Motherboard Review The CWWK NAS-N150-6P is a Mini-ITX NAS motherboard built for compact DIY storage systems, with the reviewed version using Intel’s N150 processor. This is a 4-core, 4-thread Twin Lake CPU with a 6W processor base power and a maximum turbo frequency of 3.6GHz, so it […]

Don’t Buy the WRONG Hardware KVM – Use This Guide To Get it Right, First Time! Remote access is often treated as a software problem, but there are situations where software alone is not enough. A physical remote KVM sits between you and the target computer at the hardware level, giving remote access to the […]

Synology Prime Day Deals – 10-25% OFF (DS925+, DS1525+, DS425+ and MORE) Synology has really gone big on these latest deals for Prime Day 2026, which is a massive surprise after years of them being incredibly restrained and conservative at these sales events. With HDD and SSD prices steadily increasing throughout 2026, most users have […]

Asustor Lockerstor Gen 2+ – Tiny  Refresh or Solid Value in 2026? The ASUSTOR Lockerstor 4 Gen 2+ and Lockerstor 2 Gen 2+ arrive as modest updates to the earlier Gen 2 series, keeping much of the same hardware foundation while adding dual 5GbE as the main headline improvement. Both models still target buyers who […]

ZimaCube 2 NAS Review – The Difficult ‘Second Album’… The ZimaCube 2 is IceWhale’s latest desktop NAS and self-hosting system, and this review is focused specifically on the standard non-Pro model priced at $799. It follows on from the original ZimaCube and ZimaCube Pro, but it arrives in a very different context. IceWhale is no […]

The Beelink EX Mate Pro – A Very, VERY Different Kind of DAS! The Beelink EX Mate Pro sits somewhere between a USB4 v2 docking station, a desktop storage enclosure, a laptop charger, and a small conferencing accessory. Rather than focusing on 1 function, it combines several common desk-side add-ons into a single 99 x […]