What screws do I need for ssd in BPI-R3?
You should be good with any M2*3 (mm)
so 6W vs 25W for a 24/7 Device.
I mean most nas stuff you need on a daily basis like Webserver, SMB access to most important files, download server, OpenHAB server can easily be rund from a QuadCore Cortex A53. It Certainly might not be optimized for NAS usage, but it should be capable for the basic conecpt.
So you just need your normals NAS as a backup storage once a day or when you do something that needs more performance.
Also your 130 board +50 cpu need another 35 PSU, 50 Case, 40 RAM, then you end up around 300.
You call this NAS secure way of backup doing on a single nvme drive without using proper mirrors? You can use a USB stick copy there and it will deliver the same on your PC. It only has a one single drive. BPI R3 aināt suited for it. Even if you use the JMB585 it will hog up the A53, that controller hogs up the Odroid M1 Quad A55 Rockchip RK3568B2 @2GHz in RAID tasks for example. A commercial NAS costs are way more than 300 even way way more if it has fast ethernet, you can manage under 200 if you reuse some office machine parts that can be obtained for peanuts, if you cannot and donāt do DIY then please the commercial offerings are at your service, but I suspect in this forum DIY crowd is more common. And we are talking about keeping data secure, doing it on a developer BPI platform is the last thing you can do especially on OpenWRT OS.
If you donāt have backup of your backup, you donāt have a backupĀ®.
Fast NVME caching + RAIDed spinners are the way for modern NAS. We can indulge more on the A53 being enough. It is not about A53 but their acceleration engines and if they actually work here on WRTā¦ there are some beta crypto assets on debian for some filesystem acceleration on ARM, but WRT, you sure? Iāll say it again this CPU aināt a NAS CPU nor device for this task. Utilizing docker scales your own DIY NAS/SERVER beyond the 25W electricity cost that otherwise could go on online service fees and most importantly it performs. If you start to hook up devices to this BPI-R3 your power figures WILL NOT be 6W, all peripherals including nvme drive will consume. I am not sure nvme drives do enter sleep state and utilize ASPM here also.
It is a router, BPI dropped the ball hard to utilize the slot for proper 5G modems, not some nvme drives. You need adapters again.
BTW I completely forgot. Some Samsung drives refuse to work at 2X speeds, Iāve tried that when replacing the inbuild AE slot for wifi to nvme M key adapter in some older motherboard(Z97). I had a PM981 and it refused to work, I took some leftover 1TB Toshiba drive worked fine. So keep in that in mind.
Well, I think, PCIe versions are forward and backward compatible. So 970 evo plus should work on BPI-R3. With PCIe x2 speed, of course.
As for BPI-R3 as NAS usage. I donāt have any spare old computer, just notebook. Iām using this notebook as DLNA server too now, but it isnāt very comfortable. I bought BPI-R3 as a replacement for my current Tp-link archer C2 (mainly, because old router has only 8 mb flash memory and even ānakedā openwrt barely fits this size. And maybe even replace ISPs ONU with my SFP module. But I canāt choose it now). And BPI-R3 can work as DLNA server too. Soā¦ why not? BPI-R3 hardware is already an overkill for my home network usage, so why not use it as DLNA/Samba too?
Noā¦ I think the BPI-R3 would do an awesome job as an always online network device for home automation.
Not a fully working NAS/Homeserver that has multiple drives with backup plans.
Simply a device that is always working and fulfills the daily needs. Data Backup will still be done via Homeserver.
Is there any reason to boot from eMMC and not from SD card, except empty SD card slot? Faster speed? More durable storage?
I guess emmc is a bit faster than sdcardā¦at least because it have larger buswidth (8bit vs. 4bit) to mmc-controller. I guess emmc allows more write cycles than sdcards.
For me sdcard is for testing/upgrade,but main-os should be on emmc (with most changed dirs like /var layed out to an external storage like ssd).
But this a personal decision. For r3 emmc-access is a bit tricky due to not accesible the same time as sdcard.
But can I make image of sd card after all configuration for quick recovery after āfailed experimentsā? Something like windows system drive image for quick restoring/reinstallation?
Of course you cn backup your rootfs or complete disk imageā¦for emmc too
Durability is arguable, depending on the SDCARD nand type type. SLC ones are more rare and expensive than the router itself thou to have them durable. Any other sdcards, for example, there are whacky cuckoos running torrent in their phones and those last only around half year of daily usage and the nand is dead. Low power NAND is really R/W cycle limited and just has larger overprovisioningā¦ it has been so for decades, it also applies for sdcards. So either the card or phone is dies. Thatās why routers have nvram also, to mitigate the issue.
eMMC is magnitudes faster. Really fast Sandisk Extreme Plus Cards from my cameras hover around 17MB/s in quick hdparm test, while the emmc shows around 160MB/s, so obvious.
Are there any changes in daily usage and can you feel the difference? NO. The only issue for BPI-R3 is the weird default partition layout. eMMC image should be split and enlarged.
And those NAS likers, donāt forget fstrim task once a week. By default there is nothing there, as OpenWRT is a router OS.
You mean NOR flashā¦?
Oh no. Some routers have exactly NVRAM for storing variables. FRAM/MRAM/XPOINT 32-128K memory area. It is often a headache as it is not enough, but writing there solves the NAND wear level issues let it be NAND or NOR or some combo variant imho you are thinking off the IC contains multiple tech memory types, just at different address ranges. But from logical point those are different breed, also could be SPI attached. It is a more common sight in Merilins and Broadcom tomatos. Here you can see some examples.
https://eu.mouser.com/c/semiconductors/memory-ics/
NAND vs NOR thing is only random vs page access, NOR being much more durable, but slower on writes but faster on reads.
I would disagree here. If you make an antenna tuned for 5GHz youāll get significantly better reception/transmission than with a 2.4GHz antenna which is important given 5GHzās lower penetration.
And I say make as the industry has decided 2.4GHz tuned antennas are good enough for 5GHz as theyāre vaguely near double the wavelength. Even a simple dipole tuned for 5Ghz will be better but Iāve made these high gain antennas to great effect. There are also ādualā band antennas that are just made with a half wavelength between the two frequencies, i.e. worse for both.
I have a super annoying problem with my R3. Once I disconnect it from the power it is not accessible via SSH or LuCi any more. It does not matter if I connect to my PC via lan cable or via wifi. The R3 seems to booting and running, because I get connected to the internet via lan or wifi.
Please try to connect to debug-uart to show if board is up and what might be the problem.
I guess you have no static ip on the ports you try to connect
Thank you very much for the help, that was it. One more stupid question, as I am a total beginner. Which port is the ethernet switch eth0? I was able to identify all ports, but that remains? Lan 1-4 is clear, wan is clear, SFP1 = eth1 and SFP2 is SFP2 but what is ethernet switch eth0?
Last dec 28 snapshot bricks wired partā¦ anyone has any recent mainline snapshot 
Eth0 is the ethernet-port where switch itself is connected,so you cannot access it from outside
https://wiki.fw-web.de/doku.php?id=en:bpi-r3:start#network_connections
@FerrumMaster have you full bootlog? Seems kernel is loaded completely,but userspace is not readyā¦so not see any error on screenshot
Last ones I have is sysupgrades from 28th Novā¦ Have been sysupgrading using attended method since, so didnāt catch others.
Hereās an download link: https://1drv.ms/u/s!AqqvfHopM5OMk7MI6W-LWyGCpeVa9Q?e=vBLENK