Raspberry Pie NAS

[Emzijs]

Sorry for hijacking the thread, but I have a same idea as OP has - make an Raspberry Pi 3 NAS. My idea is to buy RPi, pair it with 320GB laptop drive(temporarily) and put an OMV to make it as a NAS. I wanna make that NAS mainly to store DLSR Images(RAW/JPEGS), movies, other pictures, music, tv series and other useless stuff. I stored all of that on my gaming rig and it's a bit painful for me. 

Is this a good enough option? is there any alternatives? I want a cheap and efficient system since electricty is not very cheap where I live.

[ProjectBox153]

8 hours ago, DarkPlatinum said:

You forgot USB 3 . Anyway, I see your point, but dream on about getting 480Mb/s USB transfer anyway.

I'm sorry? What does USB 3 have that's relevant to a RPi?

[Emzijs]

On 12/29/2017 at 5:12 PM, Jamiec1130 said:

Don't make a Pi your NAS. Get an old free Dell OptiPlex (Core 2 Duo OptiPlex machines are always given to me by complete strangers) and use FreeNAS. You'll be far happier with the better speeds, not to mention far better drive upgrade options.

Can I ask you why it's not a good idea to make Pi as a small home-user NAS? Because when I wanted to make NAS out of old PC i have laying around (4GB DDR2, Q8300 with old ass 400W PSU), I came to conclusion it's more reasonable to buy RPi, install OMV and connect it with whatever Hard drive I can find.

[LAwLz]

On 12/29/2017 at 11:21 PM, DarkPlatinum said:

I use OpenMediaVault for running a media server on my raspberry pi. I have a full USB (16GB) filled with movies and i have 2x 8GB USBs that are empty. The media server can stream very well. I have a 50MbPS router. I must say that if you were to use the raspberry pi as a home server, it is not worth it. Pretty good for a media server. 

 

It is much faster to use the USBs in a computer, rather than transferring data over the internet. Basically, its going from your laptop, to the router, to the raspberry pi and then to the USBs. The limiting factor is, router speed, and USB speed.

I don't understand your post.

What do you define as a "home server", and what do you define as a "media server"? To me, they are not mutually exclusive, and I really don't think using a Raspberry Pi for a home server is bad. I use my Raspberry Pi 2 for a wide variety of server tasks. DNS (with ad blocking), web server, syncplay server, DDNS, and some other things.

 

USB to your computer won't necessarily be faster, especially not if we're talking about local access.

The bottleneck will either be the 100Mbps Ethernet port on the Raspberry Pi (for sequential read/writes), or the HDD (for small, random reads/writes). It will not be the USB port though. If you're doing transfers over the Internet then sure, your Internet connection will be the bottleneck (not the router).

 

Neither your router nor the USB port will be a bottleneck in any scenario I can think of.

 

 

On 12/31/2017 at 10:20 PM, DarkPlatinum said:

You forgot USB 3 . Anyway, I see your point, but dream on about getting 480Mb/s USB transfer anyway.

1) The Raspberry Pi does not have USB 3. It's USB 2, so I am not sure why you are bringing that up.

2) Going from USB 2 to 3 would make the USB port even less of a bottleneck.

3) Even though USB has quite a bit of overhead (around 15% if I recall correctly), it will still not be severe enough to fall below 100Mbps.

[Salacious B Crum]

Your better off picking up an old pc and buy a basic unRAID license and be done with it, it has an upgrade path so you don't need to be concerned about that for quite a long time I can't imagine a pi having much of an upgrade path

[ProjectBox153]

7 hours ago, Emzijs said:

Can I ask you why it's not a good idea to make Pi as a small home-user NAS? Because when I wanted to make NAS out of old PC i have laying around (4GB DDR2, Q8300 with old ass 400W PSU), I came to conclusion it's more reasonable to buy RPi, install OMV and connect it with whatever Hard drive I can find.

Generally you will get much better performance out of a full system (provided it has 10/100/1000 ethernet) then a RPi. I find that having the gigabit ethernet is a huge timesaver for transferring large amounts of files or just large files. Also, you are limited to USB 2 (480Mb/s) on the RPi whereas you can use SATA (probably 2, so 3Gb/s) on the full system. Sure, you may have more costs in power, but it won't be too much and it may be worth it to have better performance and upgrade options. 

 

1 hour ago, mrbilky said:

Your better off picking up an old pc and buy a basic unRAID license and be done with it, it has an upgrade path so you don't need to be concerned about that for quite a long time I can't imagine a pi having much of an upgrade path

unRAID for a basic file server? FreeNAS is, well, free and does the same things for a home user. 

[DarkPlatinum]

15 hours ago, LAwLz said:

 

What do you define as a "home server", and what do you define as a "media server"? To me, they are not mutually exclusive, and I really don't think using a Raspberry Pi for a home server is bad. I use my Raspberry Pi 2 for a wide variety of server tasks. DNS (with ad blocking), web server, syncplay server, DDNS, and some other things.

 

 

1) The Raspberry Pi does not have USB 3. It's USB 2, so I am not sure why you are bringing that up.

2) Going from USB 2 to 3 would make the USB port even less of a bottleneck.

3) Even though USB has quite a bit of overhead (around 15% if I recall correctly), it will still not be severe enough to fall below 100Mbps.

First off, when i was talking about USB 3, i meant USB 3 in a laptop or dekstop computer. What i mean about a media server is videos, films, pictures, etc. What i mean about a  home server is, tranferring files between the rpi and the computer. The storage would have to be a USB thumbdrive or SSD usb. There is no point in transferring files to the raspberry pi becuase, the time it takes will be very slow compared to plugging in the USB straight into your computer.

[DarkPlatinum]

On 1/1/2018 at 5:35 AM, Jamiec1130 said:

I'm sorry? What does USB 3 have that's relevant to a RPi?

Sorry! I meant USB 3 in a computer, not in the raspberry pi.

[ProjectBox153]

3 hours ago, DarkPlatinum said:

First off, when i was talking about USB 3, i meant USB 3 in a laptop or dekstop computer. What i mean about a media server is videos, films, pictures, etc. What i mean about a  home server is, tranferring files between the rpi and the computer. The storage would have to be a USB thumbdrive or SSD usb. There is no point in transferring files to the raspberry pi becuase, the time it takes will be very slow compared to plugging in the USB straight into your computer.

Are you going to connect a USB flash drive  to your iPhone or iPad to watch a movie stored on it? No. Using a server for storage like this is useful to access data on any device.

[DarkPlatinum]

19 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Are you going to connect a USB flash drive  to your iPhone or iPad to watch a movie stored on it? No. Using a server for storage like this is useful to access data on any device.

Sorry for the clarification. What i meant using the usbs connected to the laptop is, it will take a shorter time to write media to the USBs rather than over internet. I am not talking about reading data. 

[ProjectBox153]

1 hour ago, DarkPlatinum said:

Sorry for the clarification. What i meant using the usbs connected to the laptop is, it will take a shorter time to write media to the USBs rather than over internet. I am not talking about reading data. 

What would be the point of writing data to a flash drive if you're not going to be able to read it elsewhere from a different device? That's the point of a file server. When connected over ethernet, my old Core 2 Duo server gets about 110-115 MB/s, not that bad.

[DarkPlatinum]

5 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

What would be the point of writing data to a flash drive if you're not going to be able to read it elsewhere from a different device? That's the point of a file server. When connected over ethernet, my old Core 2 Duo server gets about 110-115 MB/s, not that bad.

The USBs will be plugged into the Raspberry pi. Not everyone like you has a super fast internet. 

[ProjectBox153]

1 hour ago, DarkPlatinum said:

The USBs will be plugged into the Raspberry pi. Not everyone like you has a super fast internet. 

Umm, I don't have fast internet. A home server is for local files, and even old networks are 10/100. Modern routers are 10x that (at 10/100/1000, or gigabit) and that's what matters.

[DarkPlatinum]

11 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Umm, I don't have fast internet. A home server is for local files, and even old networks are 10/100. Modern routers are 10x that (at 10/100/1000, or gigabit) and that's what matters.

For me, 50mbps of internet cost a lot. It is around £17 for internet and a house phone with my provider. This is the "cheap" in the UK.

[ProjectBox153]

2 hours ago, DarkPlatinum said:

For me, 50mbps of internet cost a lot. It is around £17 for internet and a house phone with my provider. This is the "cheap" in the UK.

But what does internet speed have to do with local network speeds? I don’t have great speed on the internet (relative to my area) and I sure pay a pretty price for it, but it has nothing to do with the local speed of the network, which is what matters in this case. You could have a network that doesn’t have internet access and still run a home server off it. 

[DarkPlatinum]

8 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

But what does internet speed have to do with local network speeds? I don’t have great speed on the internet (relative to my area) and I sure pay a pretty price for it, but it has nothing to do with the local speed of the network, which is what matters in this case. You could have a network that doesn’t have internet access and still run a home server off it. 

Long question short, how? Surely you have to pay for something?

[ProjectBox153]

2 hours ago, DarkPlatinum said:

Long question short, how? Surely you have to pay for something?

Why would you have to pay for use of your home network? A local file server is what the name implies, a file server that runs and is accessed locally through a network connection. None of the data transferred between the server and the client ever touches the internet, so you could have a completely internet-isolated network and still have a local server.

[DarkPlatinum]

7 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Why would you have to pay for use of your home network? A local file server is what the name implies, a file server that runs and is accessed locally through a network connection. None of the data transferred between the server and the client ever touches the internet, so you could have a completely internet-isolated network and still have a local server.

Do you mean like VPN?

[ProjectBox153]

7 hours ago, DarkPlatinum said:

Do you mean like VPN?

No. A home server is connected through your router to your other computers and devices. The internet has nothing to do with accessing it (unless you're outside the network, then that'd be different).

[DarkPlatinum]

3 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

No. A home server is connected through your router to your other computers and devices. The internet has nothing to do with accessing it (unless you're outside the network, then that'd be different).

Surely the tablet/phone has to be connected to wifi? You have to pay for networking such as wifi.

[ProjectBox153]

1 minute ago, DarkPlatinum said:

Surely the tablet/phone has to be connected to wifi? You have to pay for networking such as wifi.

No, you don't. What you pay for is internet connectivity, and that doesn't matter when talking about a local transfer of files. The files going to and from a home server don't touch the internet.

[DarkPlatinum]

1 hour ago, Jamiec1130 said:

No, you don't. What you pay for is internet connectivity, and that doesn't matter when talking about a local transfer of files. The files going to and from a home server don't touch the internet.

But how would the router emit a wifi signal without internet connectivity?

[ProjectBox153]

56 minutes ago, DarkPlatinum said:

But how would the router emit a wifi signal without internet connectivity?

What? A router will always work without an internet connection. Sure, you won't be able to get online, but the internet (as I've already said) doesn't matter for this.

[cox1000]

But how would the router emit a wifi signal without internet connectivity?

 

@Jamiec1130 is entirely correct. An internet connection is not required for local network devices to function, to allow local networking between local devices. There is a difference between LAN and WAN, your LAN (Local Area Network) is the network that operates within your household (between devices). This can be using wireless or wired technology, and may or may not use hardware provided by your ISP. When you connect to the internet, you connect to a WAN (the internet), which is actually a network of lots of wide area networks. As such, you can transfer files on your local network without communicating over the internet at all, and the speed you experience is determined by the hardware that you have, and the technology you are using for networking them, NOT your INTERNET speed (stated by your ISP). I'm actually surprised that there hasn't been a TechQuickie on this, however this video may help with your understanding. 

 

 

[Salacious B Crum]

Wow you guys are still at it bet the OP never thought he'd get this advanced education!