Xyber Hydra NAS
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ZDNET’s key takeaways
- The Xyber Hydra NAS is on sale for $219 on the official site.
- You can get some pretty impressive transfer speeds and massive storage with this NAS.
- To make it work, you’ll need to dedicate some time to installing and configuring software.
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When I received the Xyber Hydra NAS–> (Network Attached Storage) device, I assumed it was a fairly typical plug-and-play situation. After unboxing, I should theoretically be able to plug the device in, log in, run through a quick setup, and wind up with a nice storage solution for my network.
Unfortunately, that was not the case.
If you go to the X-Plus store and look at the Hydra, you’ll get plenty of description for the hardware, but next to nothing for the software. Sure, the page indicates it dual-boots Windows and Linux, but there’s zero mention of the software it employs to make it an actual NAS device.
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You get four SSD bays, plenty of USB ports, two HDMI ports, two 2.5G Ethernet ports, Wi-Ffi and Bluetooth — all of which come together to make for a very nice home-based NAS device.
But, again, what about the software? A NAS is only as good as the software it includes, right? After all, you don’t want to buy the device, only to wind up having to install the necessary software to make it a NAS.
Yet, that’s precisely what the Xyber Hydra NAS is: a tiny plastic box with enough power and hardware to be used as a NAS, but no software to serve the purpose.
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My experience
After connecting the device to a monitor, keyboard, and mouse, I let it boot into Ubuntu Linux to see what was what. The distribution is Ubuntu, and, oddly enough, it booted directly to the login screen with the user “xyber-co” and no password.
My first bit of business was to create a new account with an actual password. Once I did that, I logged out of the pre-configured account and logged back in with the new account.
Much better.
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The next thing I did was open the Application Overview to see what software was available. To my surprise, there was nothing even remotely related to network-attached storage. I then thought maybe it was set up with a web-based UI. I opened the terminal window, found the system IP address (with the command ip a), and then pointed a browser to that address.
Nothing.
I then checked the documentation, which was no help at all. It was then that I concluded that the Xyber Hydra NAS gives you the hardware and the operating system, and the rest is up to you.
You also have to supply your own SSDs, because the only storage it contains is for the operating system. You can add four SSDs up to 4TB each for a total of 16TB. At least that’s impressive.
Four bays that support up to 4TB each gives you plenty of space for your home NAS.
Jack Wallen/ZDNET
Well, I guess it’s time to set up some NAS software. Given this is Linux, the best option is Samba. Unfortunately, you’ll need to understand Samba to get this to work properly. The other option is to install Cockpit (a web-based admin UI) and then add an extension like cockpit-file-sharing.
However, when I went to install the necessary software, I came up against my next roadblock: the version of Ubuntu (24.10) that the device shipped with is no longer supported, so I had to run the sudo do-release-upgrade command to upgrade to a supported release of the OS.
This is getting frustrating.
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After the OS upgrade, I was then able to install Cockpit and the extension to (hopefully) make using this NAS a bit easier. Sure, I could have done all of this with the command line and Samba, but I wanted to see how well it could be managed with a GUI.
Of course, I shouldn’t have to do this with a device that is promoted as a NAS. This should be a plug-and-play situation that any user could handle. With all of the upgrades out of the way, I was able to get Cockpit and the necessary extensions installed and, violá, I had an actual NAS.
At this point, things started looking pretty good. The Hydra was now accessible (via file managers or using the scp command) from any machine on my network.
Huzzah.
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But here’s the thing: I know Linux very well, so getting everything up and running was a no-brainer for me. If you don’t know Linux, you’ll struggle to make this device work for you in any other capacity than a low-end desktop PC.
As a NAS (once you get the software up and running), it performs really well. In fact, I compared sharing a 300 MB file to my System76 Thelio desktop and the Hydra NAS, and the NAS actually outperformed my desktop. Given how powerful my desktop machine is, that’s an impressive feat for such a tiny PC. Although it took some work (honestly, only about ten minutes), the Xyber Hydra NAS wound up being an impressive little device. Slap four 4TB SSDs into the machine, and you have a NAS that could serve your home network well.
ZDNET’s buying advice
The Xyber Hydra NAS<!–> regularly sells for $249 on the official site, but right now it’s on sale for $219. Just note that it does not include the extra SSDs. Depending on how much storage you want for your NAS, that could cost you anywhere from $150 to $1,000 (depending on where you buy them).
If you ask me, the Hydra can make for an impressive NAS device for a home network. The big caveat is that it will take some extra effort to get it up and running correctly. If you’re okay with that, having up to 4TB of storage on such a small device makes this a winner in my book.
Xyber Hydra NAS tech specs
- Processor: Intel Twin Lake N150 (4 cores, 4 threads, 3.6GHz burst) or optional N250/N350/N355
- Memory: 16GB DDR5 (4800MHz, soldered)
- eMMC Storage: 64GB (for the OS)
- NVMe Slots: 4x M.2 2280 slots (PCIe 3.0 x2 per slot)
- Ethernet: 2x 2.5 Gigabit Ethernet ports
- USB Ports: 3x USB 3.2 Gen 2 (10Gbps) Type-A ports
- Video Output: 2x HDMI 2.0 (4K @ 60Hz)
- Power: USB-C Power Delivery (requires 65W adapter)
- Connectivity: WiFi 6, Bluetooth 5.0 antenna
- Cooling: Metal base with thermal pads for M.2 drives
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