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DIY Raspberry / Orange Pi NAS That Looks Like a NAS – 2023 Edition
- okaliptos 4y agoGreat DIY project. I was expecting a simpler solution.
- stuntkite 4y ago[flagged]
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- smashed 4y agoThis is a cool project and I am happy to see interest in this sort of thing. Too bad though that general purpose SBC's kind of suck for NAS/Storage though. Both the rpi4 and orange pi zero mentioned in the project lack any kind of SATA port and relies on usb to sata. The best project I saw was the Helios4/Helios64 (https://kobol.io/ https://kobol.io/), but sadly, they folded in 2021. Is there anything even remotely similar around? Right now I am still using intel-based mini-pc's for diy NAS storage as they simply work better.
- gymbeaux 4y agoMy “NAS” is a “slim” Intel NUC 8 with a 3D-printed “riser” that allows it to fit a 4TB (15mm) 2.5” HDD. No redundancy of course, but otherwise it’s superior to a legit NAS or Pi NAS in every way.
- maherbeg 4y agoI just bought a NUC 8! Do you have an STL anywhere that I could use?
- gymbeaux 4y agoI used this one, which fits a 15mm drive, but it’s tight: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5441566 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5441566 There’s also this one that I did not try, which might fit 15mm drives a little better: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5140192 https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5140192
- lokl 4y agoODROID-HC4 (toaster), ODROID-HC4-P KIT (horizontal drives in enclosure)
- ajb 4y agoThere is also the odroid hc4. It only has two slots, but the argument is, for the price you may as well expand by getting multiple of them.
- Palomides 4y agoit seems like none of the consumer-level ARM chips expose enough PCIe lanes to do anything interesting, no SATA controllers or 10Gb+ ethernet
- rektide 4y agoOrange Pi 5 (rk3588 based) has m.2 pcie 2.0. I think maybe only a lane?
- Matsta 4y agoYep, you can get an m2 to SATA breakout board pretty cheap. If you pickup a Rock 5b (rk3588 as well) you will get 2.5g ethernet too.
- rektide 4y agoThere's a lot of different m.2 sockets. This m.2 has a PCIe not a SATA connection. You'd need not a breakout board, but an actual SATA adapter with a PCIe <-> SATA chip on it. Still cheap, not a big barrier, but the terminology of "breakout board" is quite incorrect. https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/zm3sms/does_the_orange_pi_5_support_sata_ssds_with_a_mb/ https://www.reddit.com/r/OrangePI/comments/zm3sms/does_the_o...
- ranma42 4y agoRK3568 / RK3588 have 3 SATA controllers and for example the Rock Pi 3A seems to have the SATA routed to the bottom m.2 connector, as well as the possibility to switch the USB3 port over to SATA https://linuxgizmos.com/pi-like-rk3568-sbc-grows-sata-out-of-its-usb-ports/ https://linuxgizmos.com/pi-like-rk3568-sbc-grows-sata-out-of... "The Rock 3 Model A exploits the RK3568’s ability to multiplex SERDES lanes to enable SATA support on the dual USB 3.0 ports (OTG and host) via a SATA breakout cable."
- tyingq 4y agoNot ARM, but there's the Odroid H3 and H3+. https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3-plus/ https://www.hardkernel.com/shop/odroid-h3-plus/
- hanklazard 4y agoYeah, these seem pretty great for a small NAS, especially with a simple mirrored ZFS setup.
- ilyt 4y agoAt that point just get normal MiniITX board and case
- kube-system 4y agoITX cases are often 10 liters or more, and the smallest ones are still a few liters. Some of those embedded boards can have cases of a liter or less.
- ilyt 4y ago...and you're building a NAS with a minimum of 2 3.5 inch disks
- 4y ago
- bornfreddy 4y agoThere is Argon Eon which gets good reviews, but I haven't decided to try it yet. A bit more expensive than this diy - 180 EUR [0]. It has space for 2x 2.5 inch and 2x 3.5 inch disks. If someone has it, I would be curious to know how good it is. [0] https://www.en.galagomarket.com//item/display/3130/10443_ohisja_argon40_argon-eon---nas-enclosure-for-raspberry-pi-4-argon40-104950-.jpeg https://www.en.galagomarket.com//item/display/3130/10443_ohi...
- sprash 4y ago> Is there anything even remotely similar around? There is GnuBee [1] with two models for 2.5" drives [2] and 3.5" drives [3]. 1.: http://gnubee.org/ http://gnubee.org/ 2.: https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-1 https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-1 3.: https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-2 https://www.crowdsupply.com/gnubee/personal-cloud-2
- Gigachad 4y agoI have this thing. It's just about useless imo. The CPU is so low power that it maxes out doing a file transfer making it incredibly slow. It's maybe neat if you want to tinker with open source hardware. Also weird that they acknowledge that the GNU foundation asked them to change the name yet they seemingly won't ever do that.
- rdslw 4y agoI helped a friend to create home storage with two units (redudancy) of gnubee PC1 (2.5" drives), and setup is ultra useful, fast, low power and reliable (contrary to sibling comments ;) -> highly recommend it. Usage (few years of happy usage): * openwrt custom build with patches * FDE for all drives using linux cryptsetup, including custom patches for cryptoengine (critical) * big (read x TB) repos served by locally (on gnubee) run syncthing * big files served for local media devices over ksmbd, (read 4k streams ;) * drives in raid1 (linux mdraid) ultra low power for 24/7, with 90% of energy budget for drives. Highly recommended! But yes, I agree that it required tinkering, skills and time to set up.
- johnklos 4y agoThere is such a thing as good enough. For instance, are you trying to watch a two hour movie in five minutes, or two hours? For most things, particularly video streaming, 100 Mbps is more than enough. If you want faster, a Pi 4 can saturate gigabit with mirrored storage on USB. You don't need dedicated SATA ports to do that.
- Gigachad 4y agoI've tried to use a pi as a cloud storage but I just couldn't find a usable setup. SFTP mounts are unreliable and slow, NFS is insecure so can't be exposed over the internet, Nextcloud had the best UI but run like a dog on the pi 4. I eventually built a full x86 desktop but found nextcloud is slow with any amount of processing power. Put 20k photos in a directory and it just stops functioning. Gave up and went with Google Drive.
- smashed 4y agoPerformance is important but my main problem is reliability of the usb to SATA controllers. In practice you often get weird timeout issues and unintelligible errors in kernel logs, hard resets, drives disconnecting or worst, data corruption. It's also always difficult to tell if it is a failing drive, or if it's a controller bug, or power supply issue.
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoDoes SMART work over usb? If not how are you alerted of drive problem?
- gopromaster 4y agoRadxa has the Taco hat for the RasPi CM4, with 5 SATA slots, an M.2 Slot and 2.5GbE! https://wiki.radxa.com/Taco https://wiki.radxa.com/Taco
- mosselman 4y agoIs this booting from USB or from the sd-card? I can't figure it out from the installation instructions. If it is the sd-card then poor installation.
- gabrielhidasy 4y agoMine is running from a micro-SD card (+adapter on the old boards) since... I don't know, which year did the Pi 2 came out? It's not the same Pi anymore, but I'm re-using that 8gb card ever since.
- axiomdata316 4y agoWhat is an ideal setup that doesn't use that method?
- pja 4y agoPi4 will boot straight from a USB drive. Given the unreliability of sd-cards this is preferable if you need a USB drive anyway.
- mosselman 4y agoI am not sure if I understand your question, but what I was hinting at is the reliabilty of the sd-card. I've had several Raspberry installations get corrupted due to power outage, which the sd-card can't handle at all. Back then I didn't get booting from SSD through a USB-Sata adapter working. I've read that it is easier now though. What is your experience?
- bornfreddy 4y agoRead-only sd card works pretty well though in my experience. You can make it rw for upgrades and remount to ro once done. All the files which need write access (but you don't care about preserving) can be "saved" to tmpfs.
- Shared404 4y ago
- r3trohack3r 4y agoFirst time I’ve heard of an Orange Pi.
- eropple 4y agoThere are a ton of these sorts of SBCs, and they're all more readily available at reasonable prices than the Raspberry Pi. Most have Cortex-A53s, which are in the same class as a Raspberry Pi 3; the RPi4 has Cortex-A72 cores, but for most things that you'll use one of these for, that's not super relevant. This lack of name recognition is a real pain for people. A lot of folks in the 3D printing community kind of hurt themselves by scouring the internet for marked-up Raspberry Pis from scalpers when a Le Potato or an Orange Pi or a NanoPi or a Rock64 would do just fine. (I use Rock64 boards when I don't need wifi, and Orange Pi 3 LTS boards when I do.) My printer hub is now a Raspberry Pi only because all of the decent touchscreens I found really depend on the Raspberry Pi pinouts to connect power and HDMI, but if you just need a computer in a case, the alternatives are very good and reasonably priced.
- megous 4y agoGood brand. I've been running several different Orange Pi SBCs for almost 7 years 24/7 now since back when Orange Pi PC still cost just USD 15 and lower specced Raspberry Pi 2 cost almost 3x that. These days with EUR 22 no-VAT EU import limit gone, and post COVID price hikes, it's not such a great deal anymore. The price of Orange Pi PC is 2x it was 7 years ago, and the technology is now 7 years out of date.
- chazeon 4y agoI have been eyeing Orange Pi for a while. They made great boards but the limited choice of cases for them, especially for their latest board, has made me hesitate. The limited space in the city limited my access to 3D printer at home. FriendlyELEC does a much better job by selling board with cases.
- johnklos 4y agoThis is lovely, and it handles three of the largest problems with using SBCs for NAS: 1) Stability due to power delivery. Having dedicated, local power delivery can make a HUGE difference with SBCs. 2) Reliability of SD card media. Spinning rust, or even real SSDs, are worlds more reliable than SD cards. If an SD card is used just for booting, then it'll last forever. 3) Overall reliability of stored data. Having two drives in a proper mirror is definitely desirable. It matches my criteria for my own colocated 1U Raspberry Pi server. Mine has additional criteria: I have another Pi for OOB serial and remote reset, an ethernet switch so I don't have to pay extra for a separate drop, and USB-3 to SATA adapters with UASP because the Pi 4 supports USB-3 (> 200MB/sec per drive, simultaneously). https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/1551599800453308417 https://twitter.com/AnachronistJohn/status/15515998004533084...
- ilyt 4y ago> It matches my criteria for my own colocated 1U Raspberry Pi server. Mine has additional criteria: I have another Pi for OOB serial and remote reset, an ethernet switch so I don't have to pay extra for a separate drop, and USB-3 to SATA adapters with UASP because the Pi 4 supports USB-3 (> 200MB/sec per drive, simultaneously). That doesn't seem worth it compared to just buying some old used server, especially if you going to get separate pi just for oob. Hell, currently on ovh/kimsufi $6/mo gives you 2c/4t atom with 1TB of disk and 4GB of RAM I pay ~10 eur for colocated 2c/4t atom with 2TB
- johnklos 4y agoIt's not worth it to you, but it's worth it to me. See, I know that my hardware is secure. I don't have to worry about bullsh*t closed-stack IPMI / iLO that requires a specific JVM from a decade ago. My server takes less power than "some old used server", which means I pay less money, anyway. Also, my server is my own hardware that I own. Is your €10 a month "2c/4t atom" your own hardware, or is it a "dedicated server" that is controlled and managed by OVH / Kimsufi? If the latter, then how do you know it's secure? You don't. You have to trust OVH / Kimsufi. Real, owned hardware is not comparable to "dedicated servers" when it comes to security. What's fine for you isn't fine for me. I actually care about who has direct access to the systems I run.
- flas9sd 4y agothe scope is impressive. After showing all the hardware he goes on presenting his own developed "webOS" (https://arozos.com/ https://arozos.com/) how to make the best use and get a lot of value out of the NAS.
- sinoue 4y agoAnyone install Plex Media Server on this? Biggest issue I see is the slow transcoding.
- kelnos 4y agoAround a year ago I picked up an Axzez Interceptor[0]. It's a Compute Module 4[1] carrier board with a 5-port SATA controller hanging of the Pi's single PCIe lane. They also sell a piece of metal to adapt the board to a Mini-ITX form factor. Bought a NAS-like case for it, and I'm really happy with the result. [0] https://www.axzez.com/product-page/interceptor-carrier-board https://www.axzez.com/product-page/interceptor-carrier-board [1] The module version of the RasPi4.
- rmykhajliw 4y agoBy the way. Did anyone try to use a large sd-card as storage ? I meant 256-512GB. In my logic it must decrease power consumption when keeping the same IO performance as external ssd connected through USB.
- razemio 4y agoI am uncertain if USB can be a bottleneck there, but if I am not mistaken, SSDs offer better (more?) cache. This dramatically reduces time needed for non-sequential read/write operations.
- rmykhajliw 4y agoUSB - 30Mbyte/sec theoretically for RPI, but in reality somewhere around 20Mbyte/sec SD cards - class 10 tested on RPI show the same performance 21-27Mbyte/sec So the issue mostly in throughput performance of the interface
- dengolius 4y agoWhy I don't see mdadm in this article? imho: useless project
- RealStickman_ 4y agoThe main point of this article is building a NAS pretty much from scratch. Setting up mdadm, is just a tiny part of the overall steps. If you read Step 15, the writer mentions some sort of sandboxing built in to their operating system. I'd say that's the RAID you're apparently missing.
- eurekin 4y agoI also fell down similar rabbit hole. I clustered five raspberry PIs using Ceph. It's not super great performing, but currently getting 30MBps reads and writes for different pool types; most notably 3 times replicated and 3+2 erasure coded one. There are 6 Adata HD720 2.5" 2TB USB spinning drives. Planning to add SSD for Journaling and wal now. I've put that cluster through hell - like pulling one straight out and resoldered one USB PSU pass through mod and it didn't lose data at all. I'm mightily impressed that it works at all