Raspberry Pi 4 as NAS? And some other questions.

[tommy2712]

Hello, I'm planning to have a NAS for long term storage of large RAW photos and short clips from video games. I want the server to be online 24/7 so the low power Pi 4 is currently the top choice.

The HDD will be a single Seagate Ironwolf 4TB with plan to expand to 4 drives with RAID 5 in the future. The power supply for the hard drive is the AmazonBasic USB 3.1 10-ports hub with 65W powered (20V / 3.25A).

I'm using OpenMediaVault and have successfully tested the NAS with a Pi 3B+ and an SSD.

 

Can you guys tell me if there's somethings wrong with this setup? Do you have a better recommendation with similar budget?

 

Some more questions.

 

1. The Pi 3 B+ supports 300Mb/s over ethernet but average sustain transfer speed is around 22MB/s or 176Mb/s which is way lower than what it is capable of, is there something I can do to improve the speed?

 

2. When I eventually upgrade to 4 drives in RAID 5, do I have to format everything on the original drive?

 

3. I have a plan to use an actual Windows PC as a NAS in the future with 10Gb/s connection. What is the minimum recommended CPU if I want to play video games over NAS?

 

Thanks for the help.

 

[the gamer that is bad]

how are you going to power the hard drives they need sata power

[the gamer that is bad]

i had the same idea

 

[tommy2712]

7 minutes ago, the gamer that is bad said:

how are you going to power the hard drives they need sata power

The USB hub has a separate power supply, which I hope would be enough.

65W total and the drive only use 5W max (checked on their website)

[the gamer that is bad]

i got a hub like that but it would not power anything but 2.5" drives 

2 minutes ago, tommy2712 said:

The USB hub has a separate power supply, which I hope would be enough.

65W total and the drive only use 5W max (checked on their website)

and the ones rated for hard drives are expensive

[tommy2712]

2 minutes ago, the gamer that is bad said:

i got a hub like that but it would not power anything but 2.5" drives 

and the ones rated for hard drives are expensive

The price of all the components is the why this will be a gradual upgrade over time.

The HDD needs more power and there's no way around it.

[the gamer that is bad]

yah and i don't know if that exact combination will work it might i am just telling you what happened for me and my setup

2 minutes ago, tommy2712 said:

The price of all the components is the why this will be a gradual upgrade over time.

The HDD needs more power and there's no way around it.

 

[the gamer that is bad]

i would get a server myself but i have no idea on how much power consumption is a concern for you

[tommy2712]

5 minutes ago, the gamer that is bad said:

i would get a server myself but i have no idea on how much power consumption is a concern for you

Considering a proper PC as a NAS would consume ~20x more power than a Pi 4, and I only need 4TB for now, it's hard to justify a full on server running 24/7.

The components will arrive on Monday and I'll have an update.

[the gamer that is bad]

1 minute ago, tommy2712 said:

Considering a proper PC as a NAS would consume ~20x more power than a Pi 4, and I only need 4TB for now, it's hard to justify a full on server running 24/7.

The components will arrive on Monday and I'll have an update.

ok good luck to you i gave up on the pi with hhds and am buying a r710

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 hour ago, tommy2712 said:

1. The Pi 3 B+ supports 300Mb/s over ethernet but average sustain transfer speed is around 22MB/s or 176Mb/s which is way lower than what it is capable of, is there something I can do to improve the speed?

that seems like a usb2 limit, the pi4 will fix that.

 

 

1 hour ago, tommy2712 said:

2. When I eventually upgrade to 4 drives in RAID 5, do I have to format everything on the original drive?

 

probably, but depends on how yoru using raid. If you use something like btrfs, you can change raid levels on the fly.

 

1 hour ago, tommy2712 said:

3. I have a plan to use an actual Windows PC as a NAS in the future with 10Gb/s connection. What is the minimum recommended CPU if I want to play video games over NAS?

Something like a pentiume or i3 or althon should be fine for filling 10g for a nas over like smb. It really doesn't need much cpu power to copy files over a 10g link

 

If your gonna slowly upgrade, id probably just go for it now, and get a desktop with like a i3. Then you can easily add 10g, and it won't use that much more power(about 20-30w on idle if setup right).