I can honestly tell you that the DH2300 NAS from uGreen has become a critical part of my workflow since I was sent it for testing, and also for my own personal projects and storage too.
You see, for quite some time I’ve been managing my files using a combination of various computers with network drives, and cloud services (Dropbox being the primary) and it’s been ‘fine’ I suppose. Still, aside the monthly costs of cloud service providers, their apps and controls aren’t perfect for me.
Ironically, I hadn’t thought about getting a NAS until uGreen contacted me, which is somewhat ironic given that I do the whole YouTube tech thing, and also that back in the day, I ran my own Windows server at home, which I used to store tons of files.
That said, I am now routinely dealing with huge video files (particularly as I’ve also started a second YouTube channel, Resampled Pixels where I focus more on reviews/benchmarking for PC gaming-related products). I also have several PCs I capture footage from, either using Nvidia’s own App, a capture rig, and that’s to say nothing of camera files and photos and videos from my iPhone Pro.
The iPhone surprisingly was one of the bigger stressers – at higher quality settings, video files balloon in size, and after they get big enough, windows refuses to see the files once I’ve connected the phone via USB C. Apparently, apps can help with that – but I’ve had no luck with Windows 10/11, and it’s still clunky. I had made a work around by uploading the files using the DropBox app then downloading them again, but this causes other problems – not least of which slow transfer rates at times (DropBox went down for me a few weeks ago too).
Oh, and the cherry on top – for some reason, the DropBox app for file caches all the files locally, and you can’t clear the cache without uninstalling the app (at least to my knowledge). This absolutely kills the storage on your iphone, and makes file management even trickier. So yeah, in hindsight – the DH2300 really was poised to be a huge upgrade for me.
I was sent the DH2300 NAS itself, and 2x 4TB Seagate hard drives to fill both the drive bays on the NAS. With how hard drive space works, this is a total of 7.2TB of usable space. The NAS supports up to 60TB across two physically inserted drives, and also USB storage devices can be plugged in if you do need extra capacity. Everything was super easy to set up, the two drives plonk into cages and are secured into place with several screwed, then simply slip into the machine. All screws are provided, and yes, that even includes the screwdriver; nice.
Unfortunately, my internet connection is in my apartment’s hallway, and so I decided to do the professional thing. I ran a short Ethernet cable from the UGreen DH2300 to the switch and left the NAS on the floor. It’s something I need to look at in the future, but it means I’ll likely need to either have the router moved, or route cables around doorways and floors, and until I finish my office setup and a few other necessary projects… well, that’ll have to wait a bit.
Once the drives are installed, the DH2300 NAS is all plugged in, and you switch it on, you can access it via a web interface. A setup wizard guides you through the setup, including creating an administrator account and password, naming the device so it’s easily found on your home network, and setting up the storage pool. I decided on a single storage pool and a single volume created in RAID 0.
RAID 0 doesn’t prevent data corruption the same way RAID 1 would, as RAID 1 duplicates the data across the two drive. Perfect for redundancy and protection against data corruption, but for my use it’s totally overkill. For anything I really, really don’t want to lose, I keep a few backups of it, including a physical copy (eg, on a USB pen drive and cloud).
Once that’s done and you’re logged into the control panel proper, you can setup multiple users, each with their own private folders (for example, Bob could have a private folder and Bonnie could have her own private folder too). But you can also have a shared folder, so anything there can be accessible to everyone, but only some users (if you choose) can have write permissions, etc.
Outside of home use, this could be handy for a small business or office environment, too.
While the DH2300 only supports 2 Hard Drives, you can certainly expand it with additional USB drives of different configurations, and then use the device to access the drives across your network. UGreen does seel NAS solutions with more bays, but personally, I think the DH2300 will be absolutely fine for my needs for the foreseeable future. Besides, I can always plonk a USB hard drive on if needed (errr… once I move it from the hallway that is) or upgrade the two internal drives to higher capacity drives).
Speaking of which, the DH2300 offers a single USB-C port and 2x USB-A (all three running at 5Gb/s).
Once you’ve got the system up and running, you can access it on the network by typing in the IP address or accessing it via say, Windows Network. Under the control panel of the NAS, File service, you can enable SMB and under advanced, WSDD2, for example.
You can also access the NAS via the internet, so if you’re traveling or want to grab something on your phone you can. Control Panel -> Device connection has LAN options, but remote access settings govern how over-the-internet stuff is handled, with Mode 1 being standard. Personally, I have disabled this as I’ll be primarily use the NAS for work or media.
I’ve been regularly using the UGREEN app on my iPhone to both upload files and manage the NAS, and frankly this has completely reduced the pain point of using my phone as a camera. Uploading is super fast on my network (as it should be), and I can then drag the files as necessary across to my editing PC.
Speaking of – I’ve recently setup my Intel I9-13900K as my ‘main’ editing rig (I spoke about this in a vlog on Resampled Pixels). I’ve discovered that iphone videos and most other content can happily be exported or edited using the NAS, and doesn’t need to be local. There are limits to this – having several 4K high bitrate files overlaid in the timeline can cause stuttery playback of course, but if I just need a piece of audio, or a few clips – it’s perfectly okay to do this over the network and again, little things like this are great for saving time in my workload.
While this is a sponsored post, I can very honestly say that I am very happy that I’ve got the NAS, and I think it’ll be a big part of my daily workflow for several years to come. It’s small, completely silent, totally simple to manage and use (which is a big bonus, as I don’t want to fight config files at times) and has been totally reliable.
DH2300 on Amazon US ： https://bit.ly/4nIdpun
NAS Collection on Amazon US：https://bit.ly/4nOFYXk
