This 13-Year-Old NAS Is SHOCKINGLY Still Useable

Aplards channel is worth checking out. I like both yours and Aplards because of the trying to make old hardware work.

I had the same excitment when I realized ReadyNAS 4200 is "just" a Supermicro Server. Now it has 24 GB RAM, 10GbE NIC and happily servers as an archive for video footage.

Regarding the RAM: you gotta use older type DDR3 4GB SO DIMM modules with 8 chips on each side (2Rx8) - that should work. These old CPUs often don't support the newer type modules with fewer chips on them.

We have this NAS at work. It was forgotten and buried in a corner for 7 years. In fact, I had to look for it, based on the mystery share on the network. I relegated it to 3rd backup location but it's still perfectly usable. It's on its 3rd set of drives and refuses to die.

"I found out NetGear made a NAS." I was surprised to find out that NetGear apparently no longer makes NASs.

Your tenacity with this old hardware is something I appreciate. Most folks give up if something is slightly out of date but I love seeing old hardware keep running as long as it's still functional. Thank you!

I found my first NAS in a moving box a couple of months ago. Turns out there are people developing new firmware for my 15 year old Dlink DNS 323 with 64MB of memory. It can apparently still be used as a backup target when using this firmware. So I added it to my project list for a rainy day :)

I've still got the ARM based ReadyNAS Duo v2 running as a backup in my loft, it only has a couple of 1.5Tb drives in it. This has inspired me to see if I can get a better firmware version for it as the old SSL/SMB protocols are a bit of a pain to work around. If I can get a better firmware that supports newer protocols I'd be tempted to max it out with a pair of 4Tb drives and use it 'til it dies...

Hey man, just wanna say that the progress you're making on YouTube is great. I genuinely enjoy your content. It's not easy jumping into tech tube and you've done a great job. You stand out the things you do are different and you're humble. Keep it up man!

This video is the best. I get really excited when old embedded like devices running linux are updated and made useful again! The process of figuring out how to get a serial console or ssh connection to an embedded device and hack around in it's filesystem to update/customize it to do something useful in the modern day is always super exciting to me. I have messed around with countless old tv boxes running various embedded cpus and custom built (usualy ancient kernel 2.6) linuxes. Thank you for going through to the end and not stopping at updating the stock firmware past the default max, but going as far as figuring pout how to install any old linux os on it!

Great Video! I once went down a similar rabbit hole during the Seagate FreeAgent DockStar era, where there was an entire community of people dedicated to running Arch Linux on a family of devices running on a Marvell Armada ARM cpu and 256MB or RAM, one of which was this tiny dock with an ethernet port and some USB ports That thing helped me get familiar with Linux while download Linux ISO's for many many years!

I bought one of those used on eBay when I had just started to work, I seriously Hated it with a passion, it did lead me to try and build my own. But your video has me curious to go dig it out my old room and see what miracles can be performed. Thanks for the vid.

I did basically this with an old QNAP NAS and Unraid. It ran fine but not enough for me to wait to keep it in my network. It was a fun project, though!

HH, I don't think you'll ever see this but... I'm still running my ReadyNAS 102 I bought new. It just works. And works. And works. 😎

the full send yolo debian update. nice.

Thanks as always for compiling these adventures. Looking forward to the next old tech revival video!

Honestly - this was awesome! I applaud you're not giving up - I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have taken it quite so far myself - but I'm glad you did. Tinkering (especially with older hardware) is usually equal amounts of fun - and frustration. Well done!

I have a ReadyNAS 102 still works great

I just did almost exactly this with a 2009/2010 Acer Aspire easyStore H340. I have never had it working but figured i would mess with it the other day. Got it all up and running and it will be going to my moms so she can use it as a backup for her business!

2:37 2C/4T