Hacker News Reader

Comment by Meph504 | Hacker News Reader

I ordered one of these when western digital announced them a few months ago, it's basically a 1tb laptop hard drive. and a bulky plastic case.

Firstly, the cable layout is frustrating, and requires bending the cables in such away that makes closing the case a pain.

Secondly, the software is very unimpressive, I had the system just stop responding several times, the windows client is rather underwhelming as well.

I just see no real advantages to say combining my own raspberry pi with a WD passport.

Other than the plastic box.

View on HN

Is it cheaper if you buy it this way? That's the only advantage I see.

From the description on website, it appears to not bundle the computer, just the case and hdd. So, if we consider the HDD to be 60EURO max, having compared to other WD blue mobile disks (couldn't find the exact model listed anywhere), then that leaves you with 10EURO for the case. The total of 70EUROs may or may not include shipping, I couldn't figure that out without trying to place an order. It's not cheap, but that pricing isn't expensive either. If it includes a Pi 2, then it's cheap.

The Nextcloud box consists of the following parts: 1 TB USB3 hard drive from WDLabs Nextcloud case with room for the drive and a compute board

It's worded weird, but I assumed the "compute board" is the PI.

Strictly speaking that doesn't say it includes one, just that there's room for one. But I hope you're right. I've looked at the PDF instructions and still wasn't any wiser.

it does not come with a PI, it's just plastic box, cables, HDD, and screws. (and maybe an SD card with their distro on it)

yeah, that is what it is. The price is lower than the separate USB3 hard drive kit from WD so it is hard to argue it is expensive, though.

The OS is put together by Canonical, until now it was based on Ubuntu 16.04 and they'll soon update it to Snappy Ubuntu Core so you get a fully 0-maintenance solution.

The disk isn't cheaper than in retail, if you don't consider the case to be worth a lot more than is realistic.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com