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Note: While this is interesting and a worthwhile read, the full web page gets a little 'out there'.

Use your own judgement.

When a health condition persists despite the availability of a simple safe solution for the condition, one needs to be suspicious that powerful entrenched interests are at work preserving their turf. This seems to be the situation with drug addiction, which joins cancer (chemotherapy, radiation), arteriosclerosis (cardiac bypass surgery, stents), diabetes (diet, sugar, drugs), eclampsia (emergency delivery, drugs for hypertension), HIV (anti-retro viral drugs), and burns (surgery) as solved health problems which persist because the health care providers involved in these conditions do not want to lose their livelihood.

Morphine addiction became a significant problem dating to therapy of injured Civil War soldiers with morphine salts. In 1890 heroin was introduced to the USA. The year 1912 saw the development of legalized opium clinics, hoping to stem rising crime rates and marketing of black market drugs. These clinics closed as a dismal failure in 1924.

Methadone currently is being used to treat drug addiction in the USA. This involves replacing a narcotic with another narcotic (methadone) that does nothing to heal the addiction and often creates more problems than the addicting drug did. Side effects can last 24 hours, and include addiction, fatalities, depressed breathing, wheezing, low blood pressure, severe constipation, vomiting, impaired thinking, and sedation.

Human beings lack the L-gulonolactone oxidase enzyme (GLO). Lack of this enzyme makes humans unable to synthesize ascorbate from blood glucose. All mammals except primates, guinea pigs, and humans use glucose to create ascorbate when placed in stressful situations. A normal animal under minimal stress increases ascorbate output to the human equivalent of 10 to 20 grams daily. Under physical and chemical stress, animals can increase this ascorbate output three to five fold.

A daily intake of 10 to 20 grams by an unstressed human is not high. Under stress the need for ascorbate may go up to 30 to 100 grams daily. The continuation of sub-therapeutic doses of vitamin C recommended for 40 years in the USA would barely keep animals alive in poor health. High doses of vitamin C in viral infections have proven amazingly effective. The low daily level of vitamin C in humans obtained from our foods grown in depleted soil has produced a state of chronic subclinical scurvy (CSS Syndrome). This problem probably affects more than 90% of humans.

Most drug addicts become involved with drugs (marijuana, alcohol, barbiturates, PCP, LSD, heroin) as youth. The addict often gets ?high? on weekends, but usually ends up in a daily habit they are unable to escape. The stress of this lifestyle completely depletes the already dangerously low levels of ascorbate in their system.

When trapped in the drug culture, addicts lose their appetite for food. This produces severe depletion of protein, minerals, and vitamins. All amino acid levels become very low. The illness resembles kwashiorkor seen in starving African childreTherapy for Drug Addiction

The therapy for drug addicts involves the following:

? 25 to 85 grams a day of ascorbate in divided doses with initial dosage determined by severity of clinical deterioration.

? Large doses of vitamins, minerals, and predigested proteins are given. After 4 to 6 days, the ascorbate dose is gradually reduced to 10 to 30 grams daily.

? Appetite returns and the patient begins to eat large amounts of nutritious food.

? The universal restless sleep or inability to sleep seen in drug addicts disappears.

? Addicts taking methadone, heroin, and morphine are withdrawn without any symptoms.

? Addicts taking a fix of their usual narcotic experience none of their usual symptoms of a? high? unless their ascorbate dosage is too low. Many addicts decide to remain on heroin during methadone therapy because it enables them to cope with the worse side effects of methadone.

? Well being is restored in 12 to 24 hours.

? Mental alertness and visual acuity promptly improve

In normal persons, ascorbic acid causes diarrhea in doses above 10 grams. This diarrhea is attributed to an acid fluid irritating the normally alkaline surface of the small intestine. Patients taking sodium and potassium ascorb

Studies on AscorbateStudies on Ascorbate

Humans suffer severe damage from stress unless they are being provided supplemental ascorbate, as their needs may rise to 30 to 100 grams of ascorbate daily. Uncorrected, this metabolic disorder keeps humans in subclinical scurvy their whole lives.

This deficiency of proper amounts of ascorbate and vitamin C produces:

? Arteriosclerosis. Dr. Linus Pauling has shown that 6 grams of vitamin C combined with 6 grams of Lysine in divided dosage causes prompt healing of arteriosclerosis and normalization of treadmill tests. Blood pressure normalizes.

? Inability to tolerate stress.

? Exposure to toxic substances in large amounts may prove fatal (narcotics, snakebite poisons, barbiturates, PCP, heroin, alcohol, marijuana, LSD) as the body cannot degrade these toxic substances without supplemental ascorbate.

? Unnecessary morbidity from viral infections. Dr. Klenner saw remarkable healings in polio, including bulbar forms, when he treated patients with large daily doses of intravenous vitamin C(100 grams).

? Greater possibility of prolonged fatal low blood pressure occurs when ascorbic acid is not promptly given in all forms of shock. Twelve grams intravenously promptly restores blood pressure to normal. Barbiturate poisoning and carbon monoxide poisoning also promptly respond.

? Pain from terminal cancer, burns, and snakebite is promptly quenched by the analgesic effects of ascorbate therapy. Morphine can be discontinued.

? Compromised immune function occurs in diabetics and persons with high blood sugar values. High blood sugar values cause inability of macrophages and killer lymphocytes to kill cancer cells and bacteria, so malignancies grow unchecked and infections become fatal. The provision of ascorbate decreases the amount of sugar available to raise the blood sugar by creating NADPH, which creates superoxide and reactive oxygen species that kill pathogens. Ascorbic acid also promotes the production of 5 carbon sugars (ribose and deoxyribose) that can be turned into DNA and RNA. When ascorbate is lacking, these new white blood cells needed to fight infection are not built because the DNA and RNA fragments are lacking.

Ghione has shown that 100 mg per kilo of ascorbate injected into rats attenuated and abolished the narcotic effect of morphine. A paper from Thailand showed that after an injection of 15 mg of pentobarbital, the sleeping time of rabbits progressively decreased to no sleep as the dosage of ascorbic acid was increased from 250 mg to one gram injected 5 minutes before the injection of pentobarbital.

The main anti-narcotic effect of Libby and Stone?s drug treatment protocol is provided by sodium ascorbate, which is supplemented by vitamins, minerals, predigested protein, and nutritious food.

Ascorbate has important analgesic effects that have been utilized to relieve patients with terminal cancer of pain, which may be due to bony spread of malignancies and tumor growth into painful sites. The use of ascorbates not only relieves their pain but also stops rapid progression of cancer, as many cancers have morphine receptor sites on their surfaces. Morphine suppresses natural killer cell activity (NKCC). When morphine and its derivatives (Fentonyl, codeine, etc.) are used to treat pain, these receptor sites are activated and the cancer grows and spreads more rapidly. In this manner, the ascorbate can help the patient overcome the malignancy by allowing the morphine to be discontinued.

Ascorbate also has great value in relieving the pain of snakebite and burns.

In schizophrenia, large doses of ascorbate and niacin are routinely used. The brain receptor sites in schizophrenic patients may be saturated with hallucinogenic metabolites of adrenaline from stress. Oxides of the adrenaline released in stressful events produce excessive quantities of adrenochrome. Adrenochrome has the capability to produce paranoia and hallucinations both of which are seen in schizophrenia.

Allergies to foods play a role in causing schizophrenia, as nations eating lots of wheat (gluten) and dairy have higher rates of schizophrenia than nations eating little of these foods. Allergic reactions to foods release adrenaline, which breaks down into adrenochrome. Resolving food allergies eliminates this production of adrenochrome and often leads to great improvement in schizophrenic patients. This suggests that brain receptor sites in schizophrenic patients may be filled with hallucinogenic substances responsible for paranoia and visual aberrations. With adequate ascorbate therapy, these substances become removed from the receptor sites by displacement of the toxins by ascorbate thus causing patient improvement. Allergic substances in water and air as well as foods, by releasing adrenaline, can also contribute to producing symptoms. All measures that decrease allergic actions will prove helpful including high dosage of ascorbate. Hypoglycemic reactions also cause release of adrenaline, which can be stopped by dietary changes that emphasize low glycemic foods.

Case 1: A 23 year old who had used drugs for 10 years had failed several hospital conversions to methadone therapy. In three days his mind was clear and he stated, ?I don?t want to go stealing anymore.? He remains on 10 grams of ascorbate daily, has been drug free for 3 months, and is gainfully employed for the first time in his life.

Case 2: A 24 year old male began heroin use at age 15 with a $150 to $200 a day habit. He had tried 7 hospital detoxification programs and had been on methadone for 3 years. He was so skeptical of the new ascorbate therapy he injected more than $300 of heroin, which produced no high. When last seen before moving to another state, he had been drug free for 3 months, was feeling well, and had a good attitude.

Case 3: This 35 year old male had been on drugs for 23 years, with the last seven while taking methadone. He had severe constipation from methadone and was having bowel movements every three weeks that were so hard and painful to pass, he fainted or blacked out from the pain. His mental attitude became excellent after ascorbate therapy and he was having normal bowel movements. His therapy with 10 grams of ascorbate daily was continued.

Thirty out of thirty drug addicts were successfully treated with large doses of ascorbate, predigested protein, and supplements of vitamins, minerals and nutrients.

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People that want to use addictive drugs will do so no matter what kind of therapy is used. One really wants to be free of drugs, they have to have a total commitment to being drug free. This is always not the case, Addicts are looking to regain that first high that they experienced, but you can't do it so they take more and more until they either OD or become hopelessly hooked.

A friend of mine got addicted to cocaine and he went through several rehab programs and went right back to Coke. He lost his house, his job, his wife and went in debt up to over 200,000 US dollars. He ended up putting a bullet in his head. He left behind two children under the age of 12.

Drugs Kill.

I take percocet for pain, not to get high. My body unfortunately is dependent on a large amount of the drug now to feel any effect on my pain. When I run out of pills early (which happens every month) I withdraw and it sucks pretty bad. I may look into this ascorbate therapy thing actually, since I can't stop taking percocet since I still have severe pain. And I don't want to be switched to another drug, especially methadone.

Thank you for the article Hum.

Its funny how people don't realize that prescription drug addiction is a bigger problem than narcotics.

Amen! And until you're addicted, you don't realize the power of these drugs. I say they are more dangerous then your narcotics because most people assume they are safe and don't have serious risks :(

And another thing I dislike is when other people have this attitude that you are beneath them because perhaps you got addicted to drugs that you (at least at the time) need in order to cope. One of my friends was addicted to Morphine and Oxycontin, he was taking 640mg/day of the drug. He had a sever pain condition, but no so severe as to warrant that high of a medicinal purpose. After they got him off the narcotics, he had to go through pain management and is doing fine without the meds... some days he's bitchy because he is in pain, but its better then the risk of him dying (because he was on so much narcotics).

I take percocet for pain, not to get high. My body unfortunately is dependent on a large amount of the drug now to feel any effect on my pain. When I run out of pills early (which happens every month) I withdraw and it sucks pretty bad. I may look into this ascorbate therapy thing actually, since I can't stop taking percocet since I still have severe pain. And I don't want to be switched to another drug, especially methadone.

Thank you for the article Hum.

I take Vicadin at times, not that often but only when the pain I have is severe. After my surgeries I was taking 6-8 pills a day and I never got addicted to them and this was over a period of about 4 weeks. Now I take one about every 4 to 5 weeks. Percocet would not even touch the pain that i have. Percodan may.

I take percocet for pain, not to get high. My body unfortunately is dependent on a large amount of the drug now to feel any effect on my pain. When I run out of pills early (which happens every month) I withdraw and it sucks pretty bad. I may look into this ascorbate therapy thing actually, since I can't stop taking percocet since I still have severe pain. And I don't want to be switched to another drug, especially methadone.

Thank you for the article Hum.

I did that while I went through some pretty bad treatments. I have to admit to sometimes misusing the drug for the side effects, although it was in addition to pain management. You can't deny the high off of percocet is very soothing! I didn't really abuse it, nor did I really do anything illegal, but I did end up addicted, physically. I realized it pretty late into my treatments, so I decided to suck it up and deal with the pain while getting myself off of the addiction. It took several weeks before the mood swings, the headaches, the twitches, and the depression went away, but I was able to get my body off of the drug.

I wish you luck. I don't know your medical condition, so hopefully if it's temporary you can kick the addiction when it's passed. If not, then I really wish you luck. I'm sure you have to take a lot more drugs to combat unwanted side effects of percocet. I was up to about 6 or so bottles when I was done, including some for depression.

I take Vicadin at times, not that often but only when the pain I have is severe. After my surgeries I was taking 6-8 pills a day and I never got addicted to them and this was over a period of about 4 weeks. Now I take one about every 4 to 5 weeks. Percocet would not even touch the pain that i have. Percodan may.

Percocet is stronger than Vicadin. Taking pills for a few weeks isn't going to cause addiction, physically. Psychologically it may, though. But when you've been on pain killers for years, then you become addicted without realizing it.

  • 2 months later...

That's interesting that there are doctors now writing about the dangers of methadone. I've seen first hand people coming off of methadone and it is worse than heroin. Restlessness does ensue and the person coming off methadone goes through some similar withdrawal symptoms to heroin. I fully agree that replacing the nutritional deficiencies within an individual is a crucial step to aiding in the withdrawal of drug addiction. Replacing the vitamins the person has lost is necessary to get the person feeling better rapidly. There is another side to the withdrawal process though that I did not see contained in Dr. Howenstine's article and that is the aspect of physical and mental health side effects. People will still be in pain and will be mentally craving the drug while they are putting vitamins into their body. If both aspects are not addressed the person will have a much more difficult time in coming off of drugs. It is true that many people cannot get help from a treatment program if they don't want the help. Only those who are willing to make a change will succeed and only if they have the support of a family member behind them. It's difficult for someone to succeed at something when they have a lot of "nay sayers" telling them that treatment doesn't work. Support systems are essential for someone coming off drugs.

Taking vitamins right before I run out of Percocet does seem to help (quite) alot with the symptoms of withdrawal actually. I learned this about 2 or 3 months ago, I'm currently out of pills for about 5 days and normally I'd be sleeping about 18 or 20 hours a day, not eating etc. With vitamins in my system I'm up quite a bit (except when my pain is intense), I eat normally etc. Sweating is still a problem, but I sweat alot to begin with, so eh can't be helped either way.

I don't crave Percocet, thankfully. I don't get a "high" when I take it either, I never have actually. It just helps (to a much lesser extent now of course) the pain be more manageable. Until I get my back problems figured out and taken care of, I'll be in this situation. And of course, I have to worry about my Liver with the amount of this crap I take. I can easily go through 120 pills in about 7 or 8 days. Yep, that's how much my body is used to the drug now, that I have to take sometimes between 12 and 20 pills a day. I hate it.

Exposure to toxic substances in large amounts may prove fatal (narcotics, snakebite poisons, barbiturates, PCP, heroin, alcohol, marijuana, LSD) as the body cannot degrade these toxic substances without supplemental ascorbate.

I stopped reading there because this makes the article false; You cannot overdose on marijuana. Its physically impossible. You OD on water (not actually water but...) alot quicker than marijuana.

Marijuana, a illegal drug, cannot kill you. Alcohol, a legal drug, can kill you. Logic? None.

I stopped reading there because this makes the article false; You cannot overdose on marijuana. Its physically impossible. You OD on water (not actually water but...) alot quicker than marijuana.

Marijuana, a illegal drug, cannot kill you. Alcohol, a legal drug, can kill you. Logic? None.

I wouldn't say pot has a 0% mortality rate. Where is the proof? You do propose an interesting question though.

^ certainly isn't as deadly as your variation of Macaroni cheese I read in another post.

We all have our things that we like to do. Keep in mind drugs are not the problem, people make it the problem.

People who haven't experienced these things cant talk whatsoever because your views and thoughts about it are solely based off rubbish, it really is, no matter how much you guys think your right.

Personally I believe trying certain things can only be beneficial to someone, its all just experience. Believe it or not but I think that the experience you gain from certain stimulants etc. can help better a person.

People who have experience in this subject know what Im talking about, others will just think im out of my mind, so be it.

You guys will never know till you try.

btw - I don't want to come across as a druggy or what have you, i don't take any drugs but have tried the majority of it. Only smoke weed these days.

This seems to be the situation with drug addiction, which joins cancer (chemotherapy, radiation), arteriosclerosis (cardiac bypass surgery, stents), diabetes (diet, sugar, drugs), eclampsia (emergency delivery, drugs for hypertension), HIV (anti-retro viral drugs), and burns (surgery) as solved health problems which persist because the health care providers involved in these conditions do not want to lose their livelihood.

:unsure:

You guys will never know till you try.

btw - I don't want to come across as a druggy or what have you, i don't take any drugs but have tried the majority of it. Only smoke weed these days.

I find it annoying when my cousin calls me a druggy cause I smoke up. It just isn't realistic. Like I'll go 3 months smoking everyday multiple times a day, then turn around and not smoke any without any effects (Besides clearing the Haze) and can go even sit in cars with my buds who are doing it and only miss how funny everything is and how relaxing it can be.

The only Negatives to Marijuana (which if you wait till you turn 21 years old before doing it decrease to almost none) are:

- Loss of short term memory

- Build up of Tar in the back of the brain

- Create a "Haze" around the current here and now

- May induce Paranoia (Easily Combated if you FEEL in a safe environment)

- Loosing your grasp on complicated sentencing and wording

- Costs Money

- Can get you into Legal troubles

- MAY reduce your reflexes

- Causes the "Burnout"

Yah,

Its really funny how people don't realize that prescription drug addiction is a bigger problem than narcotics.

Hey,

I truly appreciate the post. :(

Marijuana addiction treatment

Marijuana is the most controversial drug as to the danger for dependency, physical health and mental problem. Don't get mislead! Most of the hard drug users have started their addiction with marijuana. :thumbup:

Drug rehab centers can be really confusing with all the different programs and philosophies. There are different school of thought on marijuana. We will try to teach you what the drug really is. Remember if Marijuana would be so "innocent", you would not read this website now. Drug rehabilitation is a process with different phases that will bring the individual to a drug free life. :alien:

http://www.marijuanaaddictiontreatment.com

Clearly established goals, responsibilities, and length of time in drug and alcohol treatment.Skill sets that provide immediate relief and self control over impulses.Engaging in competent mastery of skills independent of the therapist?s suggestion.

-------------------------------

Emma

http://www.marijuanaaddictiontreatment.com

  • 1 month later...

The key thing to remember when at the doctors, and he tells you that you have some illness that requires a prescription, is that what ever he is going to give you there are going to be side effects and potential risks in taking them. I have yet to find a prescription that is 100% safe and with out side effects. The FDA can't make money if it is selling you something that will work. It needs to be able to sell you something that will help one thing and then that one thing will go away but what you took will cause another thing and then they will give you something for that and it is just a vicious circle that ends up with you having more problems than you began with. Narconon VistaBay cane help you. They will give you more than just your life back they will restore hope and a new meaning to the word living.

I wouldn't say pot has a 0% mortality rate. Where is the proof? You do propose an interesting question though.

I would say it has an absolute zero mortality rate.

Here's proof, here's some more. There are countless articles and studies out there, no one has EVER died from smoking too much marijuana. Get your DARE facts straight son.

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I added a couple of MP44Q M.2 PCIe 4.0 SSDs (2 x 4TB) that can be availed on Amazon for $478.99 (the lowest price for 3 months) that TEAMGROUP supplied us with Then we have the almost completed build, you just need to push the card into the PCIe slot. Unfortunately, IceWhale Technologies did not provide a screw for the PCIe card frame (this is also apparent in their own video). Here it is at several different angles, with the last pic showing the SATA Y-Cable connected to the two WD Red Plus 4TB drives. Setup and Usage Next, you connect your cables to the I/O, and the ZimaBoard 2 powers on automatically, as there is no power button on the device. Power is controlled through the Settings in ZimaOS. BIOS The ZimaBoard 2 includes an Aptio BIOS from American Megatrends [1, 2, 3], and you can setup pretty much everything here including the boot order, which is locked to the UEFI OS, however above that choice you can enable or disable booting to a SATA/USB bootloader so this would still allow you to switch to an alternative bootloader and boot from it, or disable it to instead always start from the first disk with an OS installed on it. Initial Setup Upon connecting to the LAN and booting up, the ZimaBoard 2 can be reached by navigating to the IP address (shown if you have a monitor connected), or you can find it using the ZIMA Client desktop application, which is essentially a Zima device finder. Initializing the ZimaBoard 2 The ZimaOS setup process is pretty straightforward, through a wizard, and in full above, it basically consists of setting up an account and some handy tips, and that's that! Post Setup (ZimaOS update) Upon first boot, you are alerted that there is a ZimaOS update from 1.5.0 to 1.6.1, which I applied; the full process is shown above with the changelog. ZimaBoard 2 Storage Setup Next, it is time to set up the storage. ZimaOS actually throws everything onto the eMMC flash drive; it is also the default location of AppData, which is definitely something to be wary about, as the 45GB available storage could fill up quickly. HDDs I first attempted to create a Storage Pool using the two 4TB WD Red Plus NAS drives, and got an error message: After several attempts and then looking online, I discovered it was a bug with ZimaOS where the fix was simply to reboot ZimaOS and then try again, this time I was able to create a RAID mirror using the two drives. SSDs I did the same for the SSDs, as you will see in the above gallery, when I created the second Storage Pool, it only allowed me to select available drives. ZimaBoard 2 AppData ZimaOS comes with an App Store that includes a repository of almost 400 apps, so you will be able to find most of what you'll need for a NAS (although after a quick search, I wasn't able to find a Surveillance Manager), and now comes the important part: moving the default AppData location off the 45GB eMMC and onto a larger volume: Open Settings Then Apps Then, in the Select a new location field, click on the new Storage volume you want to move it to (in my case, the Apps Storage Pool), which is the SSD RAID mirror. Confirm the Migration warning Be praised! You can also do this for Docker (which by default installs onto the 45GB eMMC flash drive) and the User database. Plex Setup Next, I tested the configuration by installing the Plex Server app from the App Store. The library folders must already exist (which I placed into the Storage Pool). Plex Server setup is straightforward and requires very little configuration. In my case, all I had to do was add the media path I just created, which you can also browse to using the folder icon in the path field. In addition, you can now map the new Media library in Windows Explorer using the Zima Client. Oddly enough, it is not possible to access the ZimaBoard 2 over the Network Neighborhood; you must map drives using the client, which is shown in the last image in the above gallery. I watched one of my Blu-Ray rips, which is Dolby Vision with Dolby Atmos, and the content played fine with no stuttering or buffering, which is what anyone needs in this scenario. ZimaBoard 2 Zima Client mobile app There's also a client for mobile. It is pretty barebones, as shown in the above gallery, for example, the Apps screen launches the WebUI for that app, and the Backup must be done manually. On opening Backup, you can select internal storage folders on your phone to backup to the ZimaBoard 2's storage, and although this is constantly scanned, the backup action itself must be manually triggered. There is an option to allow foreground backup (last image in the above gallery), but this basically means the queued backup gets triggered when you manually open the app. Benchmarking SATA PCIe 3.0 X4 A CrystalDiskMark test on a mapped network drive from within a Windows 11 25H2 PC (image above) connected over a 2.5 GbE was well within acceptable ranges. Writes were generally better on the SSD RAID mirror. SATA PCIe 3.0 X1 I also ran the NAS Performance tester, which tests the link speed performance. As you can see, it pretty much maxes out the 2.5GbE connection. Of course, you can also opt to bond the two 2.5 GbE connections for a bit more umph, but I didn't do that. Thermals Top PCIe card SATA HDDs Next, I measured some hotspots while playing content on Plex. It's fair to say this will perform better than a NAS that is enclosed in a metal or plastic case, as almost everything storage-wise is exposed! Anyway, the ZimaBoard 2 did not break a sweat with Plex streaming or disk benchmarks. ZimaOS Factory Reset ZimaOS does not include a factory reset option. Instead, you have to download the ZimaOS image and flash it to the eMMC manually. The flashing process is shown in the above gallery. The steps to do so are listed below: Download the ZimaOS image here; Open BalenaEtcher (Run as Administrator) and select the image; Select your inserted USB drive (min 8 GB) Flash to it; Connect your USB drive, monitor, keyboard, USB hub (optional), mouse (optional), and network cable (recommended) to the ZimaBoard 2; Connect power and press F11 continuously; Select your USB drive starting with UEFI in the boot device menu; Press Enter on the Install ZimaOS option; Select /dev/mmcblk0 (MMC) flash drive as target; Confirm with (three times) to wipe the target disk; Wait a couple of minutes while ZimaOS installs; Remove the USB drive and confirm with a reboot; Your ZimaBoard 2 has been factory reset. However, you don't have to stick with ZimaOS, in fact the company also offers official CasaOS images, that are based on Debian; or as they say themselves, put anything you want on this "hackable single board server" it's up to you. Conclusion I had a lot of fun putting this together. I've custom-built all my own PCs and servers since the 90s, and this is the first time I have had to put a NAS together. Even if the actual base ZimaBoard 2 was already a completed build, it still feels pretty custom. I just wish that IceWhale Technology included a getting-started guide in the box for the Start Kit, which would have really completed this kit. Instead, I had to search for the official video on the YouTube channel to make sure I wasn't doing anything wrong. So who is this for? Definitely the hobbyist who is comfortable building their own PC and servers. It also has a much smaller footprint than its nearest equivalent (in terms of specs), like the Beelink Me Pro, which is another NAS I will be testing soon. Although the Beelink does not come with the PCIe 3.0 X4 expansion, the ZimaBoard 2 Starter Kit suddenly looks to be a great bargain, even if it only offers the two 3.5-inch bays over the four in the other example. It makes a lot of sense to use Intel's N150 chip inside a NAS; it is more than capable of doing what the ZimaBoard 2 is intended for, media streaming and backup. It also looks like the IceWhale Technology staff are quite active in the official forums helping people with issues they come across with ZimaOS and the devices, peer support seems to be good as well, I was quickly able to find why I was not able to create a new Storage Pool in ZimaOS v1.6.1 even though that is quite a serious bug, hopefully it will be fixed in the next update. If you are comfortable with the command line and Docker, you'll be fine. You can do great things with this hardware. This was my first time with ZimaOS. It seems a bit barebones in comparison to the likes of Synology DSM, TOS, and UGOS, but it has a ton of apps to get you started with your home or small business NAS. Where to buy As of publishing, IceWhale Technology is running a discount of up to 5% for the Starter Kit. If you opt to get just the ZimaBoard 2 itself, it does come with a SATA Y-Cable, so you will be able to connect up to two 3.5-inch HDDs to it. ZimaBoard 2 1668 Starter Kit for $534.50 on Amazon US (was $548.60) ZimaBoard 2 832 Starter Kit for $372.88 on Amazon US (was $390.60) Zimaboard 2 1668 (16GB+64GB) for $419.90 on Amazon US Zimaboard 2 832 (8GB+32GB) for $359.90 on Amazon Disclosure: IceWhale Technology provided a free sample without any editorial input or review pre-approval. Good to know The Amazon link is U.S. specific, and not available in other regions unless specified. We only use first-party seller links (at the time of article publishing); ensure that you purchase from a first-party seller link only. Check out Today's Deals on Amazon | or our recent tech deals. 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    • It's in the Insider's group so yes it's technically beta, though these days it's hard to see much of a difference unless you opt for the most extreme beta builds, which I don't. When I moved here from the Release Preview channel I did so primarily because I wanted to see how well the restored taskbar functionality (restored from Win10, and earlier) is working and whether it was time to finally abandon SAB--and it is--working fine, so far. Not as polished as SAB, but it'll do for me.
    • I've been using MWB Premium for a number of years so that along with Windows updates and updated browser should be fine. Thanks for that.
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