"FriendlyElec NanoPi M4: The Raspberry Pi alternative can now be used as a NAS for just US$25 thanks to a new HAT expansion board"
I'm sorry, but this DOES seem to imply that the NAS can be built for $25. Not only is THAT statement misleading, but the M4 costs almost TWICE the price of a Raspberry PI at $65. So, the NAS will actually cost $90 vs $35 for the PI. :o
88SE9215 is a port multiplier so the 4 drives are only accessed 1 at a time It would have been better if it had 2 real sata ports that you could connect 2 5 port multipliers to to get 10 drives.
Really too bad they didn't include a second gigabit Ethernet port to compliment the existing one.. I really would have thought they would have on a hat meant to be used as an NAS.. IMO it could have easily have been a game changer for deployment of cost effective network centric storage solutions.
Still likely will be very disruptive, but an additional wired interface would have really helped set it apart from most of the competition. I wonder what kind of RAID support might be possible/available?
Compact single-board computers can deliver excellent performance and fast file transfers. A new expansion board for the NanoPi M4 should allow it to be realised as network-attached storage (NAS).