Searching replacement for Banana Pi M2

  • Hey fellows,


    have been running ARMbian on my Banana Pi M2 since years using OMV.
    As ARMbian stopped supporting my Banana Pi M2 I'm looking for a new and cheap plattform.


    Touch USB and network on my BPi haven't been the fastest it was still fast enough for all tasks I had.
    I don't need a speed monster...just a replacement that'll be supported for another 3-5 years.


    I'm on budget, so less than $50 would be nice.
    And it should be a powersaving device ;)


    //edit: I've been running a 4TB usb disc on my BPi. Did external backups manually.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I've tried a few SBC's ... by far my favorite is the oDroid HC2. I've got two running as remote backups. If you buy the whole "kit" (case, scard, power supply).. it will probably run you about $80 however.


    Well worth it, IMO if you can make it fit your budget.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I don't have an Atomic Pi, but I'm giving it serious consideration. (Actually, it's more about the wife acceptance factor. :) )


    Traditional BIOS, an Intel Atom processor, 1Gig Ethernet, wifi, USB3 and a very nice long list of features for $35.71 .
    You'd have to buy your own PS but that shouldn't take you much over $50, even with an quality PS. (And there's the RD-65A which supplies more 5V amps, and 12v for 3.5" drives.) A cheap alternative for a PS would be an ATX PS, but there's an efficiency penalty as outlined in this thread.


    BIOS on an X86 platform is a big deal. Since nearly any OS will install to an X86 platform, you wouldn't be limited to a few custom built images.

  • BIOS on an X86 platform is a big deal

    And USB3 storage with Linux on x86 often is a big shit show (details -- also wrt powering and availability of this Atomic Pi).


    @ExRaspberry which USB disk are you using? In case it's Seagate or WD or contains a Norelsys USB-to-SATA bridge be prepared to run into issues if you follow the @crashtest advice to prefer x86 over the tweaked OMV images for ARM boards taking care of many issues. In your situation I would most probably pull the HDD out of the USB enclosure and if it's 2.5" go with an ODROID HC1 or otherwise HC2.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    I don't need a speed monster...just a replacement that'll be supported for another 3-5 years.

    Objectively speaking, any SBC with a current image should be good for 3 to 5 years. The Odroids may be a better choice for you, but the bonus of X86 hardware is that support will always be available from several sources, into the foreseeable future. And while this is just my opinion, relying on a tweaked or a custom built image comes with risks. That kind of support for any particular model of SBC can, and does, dry up.


    I've been running a 4TB usb disc on my BPi. Did external backups manually.

    Note, depending on the model of your drive, you may not be able to simply shuck the shell and use the drive as a SATA drive. In the case of recent models of the WD Mypassport (4TB), the SATA to USB interface is built into the drives interface board. (You can get a look at the interface board here ->, in a tear down about 3 mintues in.) WD is not the only OEM doing this with 2.5" USB drives. Depending on the drive model you have, you may have no choice but to deal with USB if you want to use it.
    ________________________


    Good luck in your hunt.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    @ExRaspberry There's been a new finding, RE the Atomic PI and USB performance, that you may be interested in. -> Post


    I'm going to buy one. Even if doesn't work out as a NAS backup of last resort, there's plenty of other uses for it. The navigation sensor alone, and it's excellent spec's, easily justifies the price (IMO).

  • Atomic PI and USB performance

    The real issue is 'Linux and USB3 reliability' majority of users is not aware of. Without special precautions (as we do it on the OMV for ARM images) this can result in really horrible experiences unless you really know what you're doing (keywords: 'coherent pool-size', UAS with Seagate and WD USB3 drives).


    @ExRaspberry: Good news wrt cheap ARM SBC and SATA: https://forum.armbian.com/topi…ab=comments#comment-78982


    The inferior SATA performance we were struggling with for 5 years now with Allwinner A10/A20/R40/V40 SBC seems to be resolved (SATA interface no longer the bottleneck with HDDs). I'm currently thinking of again acquiring a Banana Pi M2 Berry and to test out the patch there (the R40/V40 Allwinner SoCs use the same SATA implementation as the older A20 SoC but have 4 Cortex-A7 cores). I'll update this thread with results in case I buy and test the board.

  • I'm running a 4TB WD Elements drive. But it's possible to buy a new one when I upgrade so I can eliminate 3 old backup drives and use this 4tb drive instead ;)


    In general I'd prefer x86 as itwould run most linux derivates and I wouldn't have to worry so much about ending support as on my Banana Pi right now.
    But more important would be the power consumption as it's an 24/7 system.


    The Atomic Pi sounds quite nice (especially what you get for the price!) - but I don't have the time nor the knowledge to struggle with USB3 issues...
    A PSU would be no big deal for me (I'm into electronics... designing own PCBs, so I know what to do).
    Also it's powerrating is quite high in comparison to my Banana Pi.


    If the A20 runs faster using S-ATA right now do you think ARMbian would admit support, again?
    Haven't been looking for other images for a while, as I experienced best performance using ARMbian.
    If there'llbe a newer image, I could imaging using my hardware some more years :)


    Wow, I've just seen my NanoPi Neo still gets ARMbian support (but in fact of 256MB RAM only that's a tough downgrade :D). I'll have a look if there's a replacement for the memory chip ;)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    But more important would be the power consumption as it's an 24/7 system.

    Let me guess, you're in the EU, right? :)

    The Atomic Pi sounds quite nice (especially what you get for the price!) - but I don't have the time nor the knowledge to struggle with USB3 issues...

    Based on Frank's tests, in the link above, if you use an external enclosure or adapter that uses the JMS578 USB3 chip set, you should get good performance.
    With the WD elements USB drive, I don't know. I looked for some of the tech details but there are more than a few models of "WD Elements". Some are 2.5" and others 3.5". I didn't find anything on the chip set they use and I wouldn't be surprised at all to find that the interface is proprietary.

  • I'm running a 4TB WD Elements drive

    All those WD drives get UAS blacklisted in Armbian (and as such on the OMV images for ARM as well). If you do this manually on an x86 installation too you solve interconnection problems and by skipping UAS also the 'coherent-pool size' issue avoiding filesystem creation in the OMV UI. Performance with an USB3 attached HDD will only slightly decrease so it's negligible.


    Blacklisting UAS on x86 Linux is as much fun as this: Rsync error on external usb disk


    Which exakt BPi model are you currently using? The first M2 based on the A31 SoC?

  • Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1058:25a1 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.
    Stuuuuuuuupid me... Just had a look at my Banana Pi...and it is an Banana Pi M1 - which is quite supported by ARMbian :)
    Glad I don't have to buy new hardware, as I'm still satisfied with it's ressources.


    But it's still running Jessie. Have to upgrade these days. Would you suggest me using OMV4 on Stretch or OMV5 on Buster?
    Is OMV5 still stable enough to run an SMB-share on it (just sharing one single folder...) ?


    You mentioned the sunxi-patch for the SATA bottleneck. Comparing to my USB3 drive in percentage how would en S-ATA drive speed read/write up? Do you guess it's more or less than 50%? If it's less I won't spend time on replacing the USB drive for an S-ATA drive (which probably won't run on my next hardware - USB for sure will be driven by any board).
    And will this patch be included in the OMV5 release, soon?


    And is there any command I could check which chipset is used by the WD Elements drive?
    lsusb just tells me there's an WD device :D


    Bus 002 Device 004: ID 1058:25a1 Western Digital Technologies, Inc.

  • Would you suggest me using OMV4

    Currently clearly OMV4. If you already run OMV3 then it's an omv-release-upgrade as root via SSH.


    SATA performance will be at 300% of your current USB2 setup but since Gigabit Ethernet on the BPi is also somewhat bottlenecked for NAS transfers the speed difference won't be that much anyway, maybe not even twice as much (see whatI've written in linux-sunxi wiki in the past).


    The SATA patch will be included in Armbian (and then you benefit by using the update tab in OMV) for sure if no negative side effects show up: https://github.com/armbian/bui…4d#commitcomment-33517226


    And no, no idea what's inside this WD. In case it's a SATA disk and you can open the enclosure then all you need is a SATA + SATA power cable + a PSU mod and you're done using SATA directly on your small BPi NAS :)

  • What'S the progress of OMV5? Will it be released, soon?

    No idea. Anyway: do yourself a favour and buy a new A1 rated SD card, clone your existing SD card on the new one and do the omv-release-upgrade on the new card (I don't know whether you're able to directly upgrade from OMV3 to OMV5 so being on OMV4 might an intermediate step anyway).


    Such an OS upgrade is storage stress and if your SD card is a little bit older/used then such updates might kill the card. Added benefit: with 2 SD cards and such an offline cloning attempt from time to time you always have an 'OS backup'.

  • Before I'd do an upgrade, I'd always backup the card ;)
    Buying a new one is not neccessary - I can order a new one when it's broken. But also I have some brand new spare SD cards in stock.


    Also I'd prefer a clean install of OMV4 over an sys-upgrade. Just to remove all the stuff I tried out before and restart with a clean device, especially since I'd like to upgrade OMV as well as the host system ;)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Also I'd prefer a clean install of OMV4 over an sys-upgrade. Just to remove all the stuff I tried out before and restart with a clean device, especially since I'd like to upgrade OMV as well as the host system

    omv-release-upgrade will upgrade Debian and OMV at the same time.


    As I understand there will be no upgrade from OMV4 to OMV5. So for me it would make sense to do an upgrade now and do the fresh install with OMV5 when it is stable.

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