Raspberry Pi and two old SATA HDD's as a budget NAS?

[Ezzy-525]

I have two SATA II HDD's currently attached to an old HP tower in a separate room which is acting as a storage server for my Plex video library.

 

Does anyone have any experience running FreeNAS on a Raspberry Pi B+? As I have seen some Dynamode powered hard drive enclosures which could house the two drives...connect via USB, and hey presto, lightweight storage server no?

 

Feels like a nice little weekend project.

 

Raspberry Pi B+ = £21.99

RS Pro Case = £4.62

Dynamode 3.5" SATA to USB Enclosure x2 = £25.88

 

Total Cost = £52.49

 

I know for a tenner more I could just buy an actual 2bay NAS, but where's the fun in that?!?!

 

Anybody done this before?

 

[kelvinhall05]

IIRC a 3.5" drive cannot be powered via USB, due to the fact that USB only supplies 5 volts and 3.5" drives need 12. I could be wrong though, so don't take my word for granted.

[Ezzy-525]

1 minute ago, kelvinhall05 said:

IIRC a 3.5" drive cannot be powered via USB, due to the fact that USB only supplies 5 volts and 3.5" drives need 12. I could be wrong though, so don't take my word for granted.

I'm guessing they're powered externally and not over USB.

[kelvinhall05]

Just now, Ezzy-525 said:

I'm guessing they're powered externally and not over USB.

If that is the case, it would work. Maybe ask a question on Amazon?

[Ezzy-525]

Just now, kelvinhall05 said:

If that is the case, it would work. Maybe ask a question on Amazon?

I'm fairly certain it would work, was just wondering if anyone here had done the same.

[elkenrod]

I've accessed security camera files from HDDs connected to a pi. 

 

The pi was fine for accessing text files and low birate video.  But I'm not confident recommending it for high quality video.

[geo3]

You can try a banana pi, which is a raspberry pi clone with a faster CPU and a SATA controller built on. 

[Dark]

23 minutes ago, geo3 said:

You can try a banana pi, which is a raspberry pi clone with a faster CPU and a SATA controller built on. 

Horrible support amongst many, many other issues. 

[anotherriddle]

I planned something like that and set it up for testing (although with openmediavault) the problem is, that it was way to slow for what I had in mind. (I have now built a pc that does the job perfectly) Banana pi is a good idea when it works, when it does not you need quite a bit of knowledge in Linux to make it work but for beginners I would not recommend it.

So my advice: go ahead and try it with the raspberry pi, its nice easy project to do.

Some things to consider: If you intend to use this System not only for playing around but as a real NAS, move the operating system to a USB flash drive or a HDD and away from the SD-Card. These cards are not made for the demands of an OS and go corrupt in a month of use and you have to reinstall a saved system image. You can find many tutorials on this online.

[Flygenring]

 

13 hours ago, Ezzy-525 said:

I know for a tenner more I could just buy an actual 2bay NAS, but where's the fun in that?!?!

An unexpected upside to this would be easy upgradeability, assuming they keep releasing new Pi's once in a while.

[Ezzy-525]

17 hours ago, elkenrod said:

I've accessed security camera files from HDDs connected to a pi. 

 

The pi was fine for accessing text files and low birate video.  But I'm not confident recommending it for high quality video.

I've got to admit I didn't even consider whether there would be an issue with it serving up large video files.

[Shura]

11 hours ago, Ezzy-525 said:

I've got to admit I didn't even consider whether there would be an issue with it serving up large video files.

I would personally go Odroid C2 for $40 US or Odroid XU4 for $75 US. These are raspberry pi alternatives that have more powerful quad core 64bit CPU, better USB chipsets and gigabit Ethernet. You can download Ubuntu and install plex server on it and run it like that or you can install Openmediavault and plex/emby plugin and run it through that. You can find reports from other people who have done this with the C2 or XU4.

[ProjectBox153]

Like others, I don't know if the RPi can handle streaming HD video through a network as it's not very powerful. 

[ProjectBox153]

9 hours ago, Shura said:

I would personally go Odroid C2 for $40 US or Odroid XU4 for $75 US. These are raspberry pi alternatives that have more powerful quad core 64bit CPU, better USB chipsets and gigabit Ethernet. You can download Ubuntu and install plex server on it and run it like that or you can install Openmediavault and plex/emby plugin and run it through that. You can find reports from other people who have done this with the C2 or XU4.

Besides the chipset differences, the newer RPi 3 has a quad core, 64-bit processor as well. 

[Shura]

8 hours ago, Jamiec1130 said:

Besides the chipset differences, the newer RPi 3 has a quad core, 64-bit processor as well. 

Yes but we are talking about a 1.2GHz Quad Core in the RPi3 to a 2.0GHz Quad Core in the C2. 1GB of RAM in the RPi3 to 2GB of RAM in the C2; Faster microSD slot, you can get the C2 SD card speeds on the RPi3 but you need to overclock it. Gigabit Ethernet on the C2 vs 100/10 on the RPi3 and I don't know how the RPi3 handles bandwidth between the USB ports but the RPi2 was shared whereas the chipset in the C2 handles bandwidth better. You can read a more in-depth comparison and review between the two at the link below.

 

http://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2016/review-odroid-c2-compared-raspberry-pi-3-and-orange-pi-plus