Can a Raspberry Pi Make a Good Media Server NAS?

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@comictrio 4 ай бұрын

I have a good NAS and I don't use any other software to stream my TV shows and movies on my TV. I use a simple USB SSD drive connected to the UBS ports on my TV. One USB SSD has TV shows and another USB SSD has all my movies. I save the hassle and electricity streaming my digital media connected to my TV without a NAS or any other delivery method. As much as I think its cool to have a NAS serve up my digital media to my TV, my method saves power and complexity to entertain me.

@Pekeliini 4 ай бұрын

I have had raspberry pi 4 4GB as my Plex server for years and it's been working perfectly fine for everything. 4k, h264, h265, everything just works. I have 5+ year old cheap LG TV which has a Plex app and the only issue I've had is certain subtitle formats but even that it was possible to change some settings and it's fine now. I can even watch something on the TV and on phone/laptop at the same time without an issue. I don't really see any reason to do any transcoding. With Windows PCs you can just use the Plex client. My biggest issue is that I should've bought bigger SSD when I started, adding/changing it kind of a chore. In a small apartment the size benefit of a Raspberry pi is huge.

@thiagoracing Ай бұрын

Could you tell more about your setup? I’m interested in building something for myself but I don’t want to waste money on it and then learn it is not for what I need and have to spend more money doing the “right” way again. Thank you!

@Pekeliini Ай бұрын

@@thiagoracing Like I said, I have Raspberry Pi 4 4GB and I have 1TB SSD attached to it. Because I like fancy things, I bought myself Argon One m.2 case for the pi so I have the Pi and SSD in a neat contained package, but you can just hook an 2.5" SATA drive to it via adapter and save a lot of money. Pretty sure with the price I paid for all the stuff I have for the PI, I could have gotten much more powerful machine but like I said in my original comment, the formfactor is the real selling factor for me, I didn't want a big machine with loud HDDs. To figure out all the software stuff, I followed guide on KZbin, the series is called Pi-hosted. (I hope it's ok to mention other channels here). It was basically just installing Raspberry Pi OS and then setting up some Docker containers for everything else (I had no experience with Docker before so if I could do it, anyone can.) With Raspberry Pi and Plex, you just have to make sure your client devices can do all the heavy lifting. If the Pi has to do any of the transcoding, it really can't keep up with much of anything. But most reasonably new phones and tablets are fine, with PC you can use the desktop client and you'll be fine. Just don't use browser and it's fine. I also use the Plex app on my LG TV and that works great as well. It does not like some subtitle formats but even with those, there was a setting "never burn subtitles" or something which then made everything work, even the subtitles that were a problem before. I rent my apartment and the TV was here when I moved in more than five years ago and I remember googling it and figuring out that it's pretty cheap model so it's by no means very modern or something special so I kind of assume that any newer model will have all the same features/abilities as mine. That was a lot of rambling, I hope some of it made sense.

@jricoc3475 4 ай бұрын

One thing you can do with a Pi NAS is have it play the role as a source host for a specific type of media. Using something like Open Media Vault you can easily create shares and populate them with something like "TV Episodes" or "flac Music", et cetera. You could store larger-format files like BluRay or DVD rips on a more powerful server, or on local storage of a HTPC or dedicated playback device. You can then just point your Kodi/Jellyfin/Plex server to the share(s) ...

@TommyGunz_ 4 ай бұрын

I started with a full size pc as a server. But felt like the power of the pc was being under utilized. So then i got a raspberry pi 5. Its great and does what i want as far as media server but im not a super fan of some of the ARM limitations. So i went back to Full desktop again but its a Dell OptiPlex SFF. This way i can use NVME as the boot drive and run the media off of a 10tb spinning rust HDD. Running proxmox so i can run VMs off the NVME for a better experience. Only drawback is not having a dedicated GPU. So some day i might slap a low profile intel arc card in there for better graphics for some Vms. And it wont up the power consumption by that much.

@killboardTV 3 ай бұрын

I have been desktop user and over the years collected spare HDD. I wanted a media center to serve my phone and TV and give those hard drives use in their last days. I set up a rpi5, a quick flash drive and a good looking 5 bay HDD enclosure for under 180 bucks. The USB IO speed has not been a problem at all while watching, and writing speed may not win any benchmarks but is more than my WAN bandwidth anyway lol.

@MathieuCruzel 4 ай бұрын

While the much older Raspberry PI 3 and 4 could not transcode, it seems the RPI 5 can transcode up to 2 streams simultenously thanks to it's GPU. With a SATA hat you can get a small efficient Mini NAS for personnal use for quite cheap, between 150$ and 250$ depending on where you live. The point here is efficiency because on eBay you can find old 8th or 9th gen Intel CPU Dell or HP towers for very cheap and they are way better for transcoding but are really hungry for watts.

@7MBoosted 4 ай бұрын

People may disagree with me, but I think the best bang for buck DIY NAS platform is still Skylake/Kaby Lake. Relatively inexpensive, decent efficiency (Coffee Lake and up are less efficient considering more cores), and considerably better expansion than the N100 type boards. Kaby Lake is better if you are going to use quicksync for transcoding as the Kaby Lake iGPU supports 10-bit HEVC and Skylake does not.

@Cribmaster252 Ай бұрын

Very informative

@JosephFrietze 4 ай бұрын

I've had a RasPi4 with two external hard drives serving terabytes of data to multiple Kodi boxes for years. I have a Plex server running as well, but prefer Kodi myself.

@kalifornia909 4 ай бұрын

I've been wanting to turn an old 4th gen Intel rig I have into a nas. My biggest gripe is finding a practical full atx supported case

@sxrry.8206 4 ай бұрын

Going to try and use the Radxa PENTA SATA hat to attach 4-5 sata SSDs I have lying around and attempt to make my first NAS, Does this sound plausable?

@djweso 3 ай бұрын

I've been looking at options for a small simple nas and media server which i can then replicate and colocated at my family's homes. Back all our data and share media. I dont want to loose a generation's worth of pics and video amd etc. I'm been thinking about n100 box wiht 16GB ddr4 and small m.2 drive. Then ad usb drives for storage. Also backing up mine to offsite cloud backup. I wanted to go RasPi but the n100 are about the same price and better spec-ed i think. I'm open to thoughts.

@TwoGuyzTech 2 ай бұрын

Thanks for watching! If you want to keep invaluable data safe for a very long time, I would avoid using USB based storage solutions and get a NAS which allows you to configure a RAID for data redundancy across SATA disks. Synology has a lot of good software utilities for offsite data replication and flexible RAID options, but of course that is going to be quite a bit more expensive. We'll be reviewing an N100 box soon that has a couple of 3.5" hard disk bays to offer similar features at a lower price, but the software isn't nearly as comprehensive. I will keep the use cases you mentioned in mind to see how well a solution like that could work. Hope this helps!

@awesomearizona-dino 4 ай бұрын

i just finished a Mini-itx with 12600k, using Intels built in 770 graphics, it is a transcoding monster, can transcode 6 to 8 streams simultaneously. i will never need that, but the other features are super fast, fast sata, 2.5 gig networking.

@mathcale 4 ай бұрын

Just out of curiosity: how much power does it consumes while heavy load?

@awesomearizona-dino 4 ай бұрын

@@mathcale Using Blender 23, the cpu ran 124 watts average. The rest of system from experience (mboard/2 ssd) would add about 40 watts during load. FYI there are programs you can use to limit cores and core speeds "Process Lasso" and Intel Extreme Tuning utility. Intel program requires z690 or z790 board. I am running a Hyper 212 cooler, easily handles 12600k.

@awesomearizona-dino 4 ай бұрын

@@mathcale my 1st reply disappear? cpu 125 watts under Blender23. for transcoding it wont load cpu that much.

@hawkgamedev Ай бұрын

just get a refurbished Lenovo mini and be happy with the power and low power consumption. Multiple slots for everything its a beast for like $150.

@mz9722 4 ай бұрын

Initially i had a pi3 for Kodi on the tv, but storage was always am issue, i basically kept adding thumb drives for more storage. I wanted to have Jellyfin to stream to other devices in the apartment, but still use kodi for playing media natively on the tv. I ended up getting a mini pc from beelink and adding a 2tb hdd to it. I just keep kodi running for the tv, and jellyfin runs in the backround for the wifey to stream her shows where she want to be at in the apartment. Kodi and jellyfin share the same media directory. It works for what i want it to. I almost got a nas, but i think this is what i was looking for at this point. Im sure there will be a change in the future.

@awesomearizona-dino 4 ай бұрын

Thanks for your great info on this channel. As of 2024 many older PCs are now available for under 200. Most of them have basics for a low spec media server.