Build your own NAS using a PI5 and a SATA controller card!!

After a recent video I made about attaching PCI Express devices to a Raspberry PI 5, I found one other PCIe card in a cupboard - a SATA controller card. This got me thinking about building a NAS using that and a PI.
As you'll see, everything went remarkably smoothly and I'm left with a remarkably efficient and cheap NAS solution!!
Links to things you see in the video (shop around!! These are just what I used!!):
* Raspberry PI 5 - shop.pimoroni.com/products/ra...
* Pimoroni NVMe Base - shop.pimoroni.com/products/nv...
* M.2 to PCI Express adapter (2-pack) - www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B...
* 12V/12.5A power supply - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* SD Card - www.amazon.co.uk/SanDisk-Ultr...
* SATA controller - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* Western Digital Red 2TB hard drive - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* Western Digital Red 4TB hard drive - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* JBOD enclosure - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* Pico Power Supply - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* ATX Starter - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* SATA Power splitter - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* Molex splitter - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* Molex fan power splitter - www.aliexpress.us/item/225183...
* 80mm fan - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
* 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapter - www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0BLCVQPMW
* Fan speed controller (12V) - www.aliexpress.us/item/325680...
Chapters:
00:00 - Intro
01:03 - Titles
01:10 - Like / Subscribe / Notify / Comment
01:40 - Project Intro
02:20 - Kit list
09:21 - PI OS Install
09:53 - Enable PCI Express socket
11:15 - Verify controller and disks
12:11 - RAID overview
18:48 - Create RAID array
24:47 - Set up Samba
27:49 - Measure disk read speed
28:49 - Create data file
29:11 - Windows test
30:04 - Linux test
31:01 - Power measurement
31:43 - Noise measurement
32:55 - Set up backup drive and cron job
36:46 - Set up automount
38:09 - Outro
38:43 - Closing titles
Equipment used:
* Canon M100 camera with 13-55mm kit lens
* Shure MV7 mic
* Elgato collapsable green screen
* Neewer GL1 Pro keylight
* Nanlite Pavotube 30C lights
* Original video capture using OBS
* All video editing using Kdenlive
* All image editing using GIMP
Music by FASSounds from Pixabay - pixabay.com/users/fassounds-3..."

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

As @davidKenny64 requested, here's approximate costs for the whole project. If you have old hard drives just sat around somewhere, use those!! Most expensive pieces are the PI and the hard drives. So please see this as a 'worst case' as is based on prices I can find right now - as always, AliExpress is extremely volatile with prices but is also a great place to pick up tech cheaply but shop around as best you can: PI5 4GB - £58.50 SD card - £8.29 WD Red 2TB * 3 - £102 total WD Red 4TB - £69.41 2.5" to 3.5" drive adapter * 2 - £11.98 total 80mm fan * 3 - £26.97 total Fan power splitter - £0.94 Power brick - £9.87 Molex splitter - £2.17 SATA pwer splitter - £0.81 ATX starter - £0.56 Pico Power supply - £9.43 Enclosure - £10.87 SATA controller card - £11.47 Total - £323.27

[@TheFrankyJoe]

Hi, I'm wondering how is the raspberry pi powered ? Can it be powered by the Pico PSU ? Thanks for the video!

[@primeral]

Hello, are the Pimoroni hat and M.2>PCIe adapter included in this price?

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Hi, I'm so sorry I missed your message here. In theory, if you still have a spare 3A on the 5v rail out of the pico PSU. I personally powered the pi using it's normal PD supply just purely because it can switch voltages and I didn't want to get in the way of it. But since the actual processing power required is so low, hooking it into the pico PSU should be fine (unless you hook in way more hard drives of course!!!)

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

So sorry, I missed your reply!! I think I put this into the description but yes, I forgot to add the hat (£11.50 on pimoroni.com) and the m.2/PCIe adapter (£6.99 for 2 on Amazon). Apols for the inaccurate list.

[@TheFrankyJoe]

@@jeffs_piinthesky No problem, thanks for taking the time to answer!

[@Jessehermansonphotography]

Glad I found this page. This was so well explained. Thank you.

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Really glad you found it helpful!! And so sorry it's taken a few days to reply!!

[@metalmasterlp]

Awesome video, thanks for explaining in simple words

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

My brain can only cope with simple words *lol* 🤣

[@user-gr5lh6cs8o]

Thank you for this excellent information!

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

I'm so happy it was useful for you and thank you so much for the support!

[@user-gr5lh6cs8o]

@@jeffs_piinthesky The thanks is all on you. I'm buying more rPi5's for my home. I just love these units!

[@112Famine]

For backups I first used Zip Disks, then a mix of DVD-RW & extra laying around hard drives, btw hard drives that have a warranty of 5 years can work for 20 years with zero problems, until that one time you move it in any way shape or form & its DEAD if it's a day past 5 years. Now I run a raid 0 connected to a single huge hard drive ... but the only good backup isn't kept in your house, in case of fire or brownout or power surge. You're better off with 6 NVMe raid 0 drives totalling 12 TB for speed & a damn slow & reliable 12 TB platter hard drive as RAID 5 automatically backing up any changes. ...but that is only needed if your pulling video off of them for editing, just watching movies the slow & reliable 12 TB would be fine .. but that matters on how many are pulling from your NAS at the same time. btw I have a top of the line home Asus Router that has 3.2 2x2 20GB USB ports & built in software for backups, RAID Drives, & a NAS. ...it has been awhile, but I think the apps on the router were swappable on your needs from what you needed your router to do.

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Thanks so much for sharing and sorry for taking a few days to reply!! Zip disks have always been kinda cool as are tape drives - very underrated as backup media. Easy to store and naturally durable...And yeah, totally agree that the "lifetime" of disks is very frequently quoted in pessimistic terms...I've still got hard drives running that are over a decade old and showing no issues. Also, totally agree that NVMe's would be way more performant but I have to keep costs under control on the channel for all the time I'm trying to reach monetization!! :-) Everything is funded purely by me right now...But hopefully I can do some more adventurous stuff down the line. And your router sounds awesome!!!!

[@joetheman74]

Would like to see you install some NAS software like OpenMediaVault to see what that is like. I know everything it can do can be done manually but I've been curious to see the setup process and operation of a Rasberry Pi NAS using OpenMediaVault.

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Great suggestion...I have a whole ton of processing capacity on the PI that is going to waste so looking to extend it out. OpenMediaVault is great for that because it also has support for running Docker containers...So watch this space!!! And apologies for not getting back to you sooner!!

[@sbernesto]

Very good explanation on all the topics, I only have one question, why did you use lvm and not make the raid unit directly? I don't see the point of doing it that way.

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Thank you for the lovely words!!! I use LVM purely to abstract away the real size of the disk. If one fails and you need to replace it, you have to get one with exactly the same dimensions...and trust me, not all drives marked as, say 4TB have the exact same number of sectors etc... So by using LVM I can get any disk so long as it's AT LEAST as big as the original and use it. It also can make upgrading the array with bigger disks easier as you can initially add newer, higher capacity drives one at a time based on the original sizing, then grow each LVM again to the same value on each disk and then grow the RAID 5 array to fill it. So it's really just a fine grain control thing.

[@sbernesto]

@@jeffs_piinthesky Thanks for the explanation, I had not considered that way of making an array larger and of course, as you say, it is much easier to do disk updates.

[@SooTanGoo]

How did you power the Pi itself? Did you use the pico power supply to power everything?

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

I used a regular pi power supply for the pi. Technically I could have used the 5v rail from the Pico power supply but where the pi5 can use a variable supply, I was figuring it might be more efficient for it to use the native one. But for sure, I can't think of any reason why powering from the Pico supply wouldn't work.

[@amorpheuses1627]

I plan on building this. BUT my main concern is that the system is using sd card for running the OS. I would prefer booting off of and using a NVMe SSD instead. Any thoughts on doing this? I think there's a dual NVME card for the raspberry pi - maybe that's one way of dispensing with the sd card altogether. Or maybe running off of a USB dongle - but again I'm not sure how reliable this is either.

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

You can get NVMe hats with 2 m.2 slots now which could do what you want HOWEVER you'd be sharing a single PCIe lane between the two then which would impact on performance. If you get a USB3 NVMe enclosure and put an M.2 drive in there, the PI has a separate PCIe lane for ieach USB3 port so you could set that up as your boot device and it'd run much quicker than the SD.

[@amorpheuses1627]

@@jeffs_piinthesky Yes I think the USB NVMe enclosure is the way to go. Thanks again for the video and the reply!

[@DavidKenny64]

Can you provide approximate cost for the project?

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Hi David, absolutely - and apologies for not putting that in - got a bit squeezed with the edit in order to get it out on time. I'll tot everything up and put it in as a pinned comment.

[@112Famine]

*Earth is the only planet* that has a *Total Solar Eclipse* in the known *Universe.*

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

and the PI5 is the only PI with a PCIe connector in the known universe!! ;-)

[@Ollital]

Since the link /boot/config.txt is obsolete it's recommended to use /boot/firmware/config.txt.

[@jeffs_piinthesky]

Ugh. Thank you!!! My bad!!!