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If you want a NAS, buy a NAS. I really don’t get people’s desire to take an underpowered single board computer and try to turn it into a useful server. There ar

If you want a NAS, buy a NAS. I really don’t get people’s desire to take an underpowered single board computer and try to turn it into a useful server. There are absolutely places where a Raspberry Pi makes sense, those places are where you’ve got electronics you want to interface with complex software that can’t viably be run on a smaller MCU.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
> If you want a NAS, buy a NAS. I really don’t get people’s desire to take an underpowered single board computer and try to turn it into a useful server. Off the shelf options tend to have awful software, pis have good power consumption, and as of the 5 is it really underpowered?
wlll 3y ago
All computers are NAS if you stick S on them and A them to an N, the Raspberry pi is no different, but it's got a great advantage in that it's small and relatively power efficient. I turned a Dell Optiplex USFF into a NAS (https://willj.net/posts/fitting-two-hard-drives-and-an-ssd-in-a-dell-optiplex-7010-usff/ https://willj.net/posts/fitting-two-hard-drives-and-an-ssd-i...) but in the same space I could easily fit 4+1 disks instead of the 2+1 if I was using a far smaller motherboard. As for being underpowered, again it depends what you are doing with them. For my NAS (basically long-term storage of stuff I don't access much and tiemmachine backups) there would be plenty of CPU, the biggest problem would be memory. *edit* Just to be clear, the Pi has some massive drawbacks as a NAS at present because of it's significant lack of disk IO, but there's nothing inherent in it's form factor that makes it a bad NAS. If I could have plugged 2+ HDs into one in a performant way I'd likely have done that rather than the Dell Optiplex shenanigans.
harvie 3y ago
Pi has superior long term support and even better community support. Loads of options for upgrades and extensions should you need one in the future. Also once i decide that i don't need that NAS anymore, because the pi would be obsolete or slow in the future, i can just take that pi out and use it for some other DIY project.
toast0 3y ago
An underpowered single board computer is plenty for a basic NAS. Certainly a more expensive and more powerful single board computer would make a more expensive and powerful NAS, but a lot of people have modest needs.
eternityforest 3y ago
A consumer NAS for most people is like, the least demanding device ever. All it needs to do is stream video at most, probably not even 4K, maybe not even that if you're just doing backups.

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago

> If you want a NAS, buy a NAS. I really don’t get people’s desire to take an underpowered single board computer and try to turn it into a useful server. Off the shelf options tend to have awful software, pis have good power consumption, and as of the 5 is it really underpowered?

wlll 3y ago

All computers are NAS if you stick S on them and A them to an N, the Raspberry pi is no different, but it's got a great advantage in that it's small and relatively power efficient. I turned a Dell Optiplex USFF into a NAS (https://willj.net/posts/fitting-two-hard-drives-and-an-ssd-in-a-dell-optiplex-7010-usff/ https://willj.net/posts/fitting-two-hard-drives-and-an-ssd-i...) but in the same space I could easily fit 4+1 disks instead of the 2+1 if I was using a far smaller motherboard. As for being underpowered, again it depends what you are doing with them. For my NAS (basically long-term storage of stuff I don't access much and tiemmachine backups) there would be plenty of CPU, the biggest problem would be memory. *edit* Just to be clear, the Pi has some massive drawbacks as a NAS at present because of it's significant lack of disk IO, but there's nothing inherent in it's form factor that makes it a bad NAS. If I could have plugged 2+ HDs into one in a performant way I'd likely have done that rather than the Dell Optiplex shenanigans.

harvie 3y ago

Pi has superior long term support and even better community support. Loads of options for upgrades and extensions should you need one in the future. Also once i decide that i don't need that NAS anymore, because the pi would be obsolete or slow in the future, i can just take that pi out and use it for some other DIY project.

toast0 3y ago

An underpowered single board computer is plenty for a basic NAS. Certainly a more expensive and more powerful single board computer would make a more expensive and powerful NAS, but a lot of people have modest needs.

eternityforest 3y ago

A consumer NAS for most people is like, the least demanding device ever. All it needs to do is stream video at most, probably not even 4K, maybe not even that if you're just doing backups.