Cheap and Effective - Time Machine and NAS on a Raspberry Pi

[@messing-with-computers]

Cost Breakdown: Pi4 2gb with Case, PSU, SD card ~$65. USB 3.0 Docking Station ~$30. 512SSD ~$55. Total is around $150. Update: Just went and grabbed real links, prices on a few items went up and down ($63) pi 4 with a nice heat-sink case (no sd card) : amzn.to/38ab2LH ($6) 16gb sd card: amzn.to/2YEzMJ2 ($27) Docking station: amzn.to/2NFFmEy ($57) 512gb Pioneer SSD: amzn.to/2BQNP5q

[@kim_not_tim]

Man, a Pi 4 on Amazon Australia is like $300!

[@h.h.1266]

Thanks for the tutorial! Two questions: Can you setup RAID here for time machine backups? I saw you were plugging in two SSDs, were they in RAID config? Also - any worries about security -- is the open media vault reliable? I don't want to inadvertently open up a access point to outside world into my home network.

[@litebkt]

With as much screen real estate, I would appreciate it if you would use a larger font. ;) Great video!

[@erikjohnson4876]

Each time I see you in a video I'm reminded of Matthew McConaughey. If you could just speak with a little more Texas lilt. Maybe stare off into space once in awhile.

[@messing-with-computers]

Alright, Alright, Alright...I may have to. You are not the first person to say this!

[@danydepp8487]

Thank you. I have a 3TB Apple Time capsule but the hardware is older and not supported by apple. I want to add between the router and the time capsule, a raspberry to act as NAS Server and then attach the 3TB Apple Time capsule. Do you think this will be possible? I don't use directly the time capsule because the lack of SMB protocol access from PC or MAC and also the speed network performance. Thank you!.

[@rossm7559]

Thanks for this Curtis - very cool. Do you know if you can use an external drive that already has a set of Time Machine backups on it? Ideally I wouldn't want to have to format before I make the drive network accessible. Similarly, am I right in saying that if I do set an external drive up through this for Time Machine, I can't unplug it and connect it straight to my Mac by USB for when I want to do faster backups, or when I'm travelling, for example?

[@davidalan2469]

I just added this to my Pi4 that I have been using for Homebridge / ff-mpeg for Wyze. I used a WD 4TB MyBook.

[@mestermoumo3503]

I am the 1k abonnés 😁 Very good video and very good explanations continues good luck

[@messing-with-computers]

Awesome! Thank you!

[@clarkmcdermith3906]

@Curtis Gross I made it through this awesome tutorial. Thanks for making it. One thing I am worried about is a power loss while writing to the disk. I am trying to incorporate a UPS using Network UPS Tool (NUT) to communicate to the Pi to shutdown safely when the power goes out. I haven’t figured it out yet and would love to see a video on it!!

[@uclacorey]

I know this is an older video so a late reply, but I don't see how you installed OMV on a full version of Raspberry OS, when OMV's saying it can't be done on a desktop environment. Would you be able to explain it when you get a chance, please?

[@elechtma]

Thanks for the tutorial. I am already using my pi for homebridge homeautomation and ad-blocking with pi hole. Could I load OMV on to the same pi? I’m concerned because pi hole web interface and OMV web interface would be assigned same domain name (the pi’s IP). Could I get around this?

[@AndrewBernardin]

Have you tested this out? I'm thinking of doing the same thing.

[@collincutler2278]

Awesome video! I had no idea this was available. This is exactly what I need in my home.

[@pvdgucht]

With the RP5 there the USB ports bandwith isn't shared. I was just wondering if it is possible with this setup to use a 2.5GbE ethernet USB adapter or does this OS not support that?

[@davidalan2469]

Do you recommend any Advanced Power Management or Spindown Times? I started with a 4TB WD MyBook but then ordered the Sabrent 2 dock unit you used and a 8TB Toshiba N300.

[@soundguydon]

Will this setup also work with Big Sur? There seems to be a good amount of people who've had good luck with this, and others who said it doesn't work at all. Waiting for my new M1 is driving me crazy ;-) Shipping times from China are slow these days lol Excellent video - thanks for sharing !!

[@jacquesredmond]

I would love to see an update for this in 2024 with Pi Zero 2 W

[@fred7flinstone]

Done all of that for my instance of OMV, just cannot get it to work. I can browse and write to the time machine share while connected as the user I have setup. When I enable time machine on the Mac I can see it writing .sparsebundle file, but it just keeps failing.Time Machine couldn't complete this back to [sharename].local. An error occurred with preparing the backup. Just can't figure it out.

[@billward2264]

Hand carrying usb drives to back up data is secure because you physically remove and secure them, but this idea seems intriguing because it is convenient and automatic...Are there security vulnerabilities specific to having RPi OMV archives permanently connected to a home internet-connected network?

[@messing-with-computers]

Any additional system within the network will add complexity and potentially reduce security. But, if you set strong passwords and make sure that your router doesn’t have open ports, this time machine server should be very secure and well worth the time savings. It’s Linux based, fully updated and running open software that can be audited. Just don’t open any other ports or give a guest write access!

[@Nitr01337]

How about running a web server on the same Pi as well? Would that compromise the security of the backed up data by default or is it manageable somehow?

[@gabriel_kyne]

cool video, however, OMV isnt supported on Debian 12, so how do we make sure the Pi is running only Debian 11? Sorry, noob here

[@glenntrewitt]

Alas, the script (and therefore the OMV instructions) are out of date (archived) since January 2021.

[@TylersNewGroove]

Hey there. So I've tried doing this a few times now, and I always run into the same issue. It always fails right at the end, and then reboots. When it boots back up, the wifi menu says "no wireless interfaces found" and going to the IP address brings an error. Any ideas on what could be going wrong with the script? Or maybe it's something on my end.

[@jtayl711]

Thank you very much for this detailed video. Mine seems to be working, except every once in a while (maybe once every couple days or so) I get an error on my Mac that "open media vault raspberry pi smb/cifs.local not found". I go to check on the pi and it seems to have lost internet (as indicated by the fact that the OMV page that I had open in Chrome now displays the "aw snap" page, though when I simply open go to a new site, I can access the internet. I restart the pi and everything seems to work again. Any idea why this happens?

[@brianbirkinbine2054]

Thanks for sharing, thinking about doing this with the new Argon40 M.2 case that allows for a M.2 SSD drive (the max I could find was a 2TB M.2 2280 (non-nvme))

[@sembutininverse]

great explanation ❤️

[@messing-with-computers]

Glad you think so!

[@Iamtherealchow]

NICEEEEE could you say how much it costs, also is it possible to get bootcamp on 2011 mac as it doesn't support boot camp

[@messing-with-computers]

Oh yeah, I will add the cost breakdown into a comment. For 2011 bootcamp, I will read around a little..

[@JoshuaSmith-lh8wk]

My disk is showing up in the File Systems in OMV, but when I click the drop down arrow for 'Select a device', nothing shows up?

[@JoshuaSmith-lh8wk]

Ah, I needed to wipe the drive inside OMV and then create the file system. Got it up and running now. Excellent video!

[@TerraRiley]

@Curtis Gross I like no name if it does the job! Why do I get shade for saving money where I can and when it works? I feel like I'm being hardware shamed and I'm a newbie.. so I'm confused! Lol Anyway- my question: has anyone had issues with their WiFi connection or NIC after install? I've been planning an OMV Pi NAS for months and suddenly the tutorials I had ready say that direct installs are no longer supported and you have to do some long deal with armbian? And the others who have used gits have had loss of NIC. So I'm all scurred now! Any changes since install? Also any recs for alternative servers? Opinions on Samba, OwnCloud etc?

[@messing-with-computers]

I haven’t had any issues with the Nic since my most recent build. And that was maybe 1-2 months back? Should be good to go. In the past I used a samba share on a simple pios install, just not as user friendly as omv, but functional.

[@DiyintheGhetto]

This works awesome Thank you. Also new sub.

[@Chris-gv5ge]

What about power consumption? The docking station seems to pull way more than the raspberry? 🤔

[@messing-with-computers]

Yeah, the SSD and docking station will draw more, but the overall power draw is still lower than a older backup drive or airport extreme. I actually did some testing and the mechanical hard drive pulls less power than an SSD (when idle) but more when active... which makes sense I guess.

[@drmjdcastro]

you did not find any conflict with installing both Pi-Hole and the OMV in the same Pi machine?

[@messing-with-computers]

It is possible, the two applications can be setup to work on different ports - you would need to then specify the port to get to the proper web console. But for simplicity sake I actually went ahead and setup my pi-hole on a cheap pi-zero-w and taped that sucker to my router ;). Check out my pi-hole video for that build.

[@justafoolfru]

If I want to run a single USB drive, can I just plug it right into the pi without the dock hardware?

[@messing-with-computers]

It depends - I haven’t had great stability without a dock. Some people have had success, which leads me to believe it is the adapter that counts.

[@Oblivic]

Any idea if I can backup iphones as well with this setup?

[@messing-with-computers]

An interesting idea - you would likely need to have your phone automatically backup to a Mac/PC with iTunes, and then have that PC automatically backing up to a Time Machine / NAS. I don't believe an iphone can backup directly to a NAS / Time Machine

[@Oblivic]

@@messing-with-computers thanks =)

[@efrankphd]

I made it through all of the steps and the part where you went back to your Mac to access Time Machine, I'm lost. I'm on a windows PC and for the life of me can I find anything that says Time Machine, and to make matters worse, OMV has disabled my WiFi and I can no longer ssh into my PI, nor can I through the Ethernet. I cant even open the OMV dashboard when I enter the IP, it worked while I was going through the set up process but something happened along the way. Uggg and you made it look so easy

[@messing-with-computers]

Sometimes during the process your router will give the pi an new address. Check and see if it did get a new one! As for windows, it has a different backup capability, but you should see the drives show up in the windows network

[@efrankphd]

@@messing-with-computers Well I don't know how but I can access OMV dashboard and I can also ssh now...but still no WiFi, although that's not a big deal. I just need to find a video on how to set up the NAS or how to make it work.

[@efrankphd]

The raspberry pi shows up under windows network and when I select it, it asks for the credentials to connect to the raspberrypi. So I can only assume that its Pi/raspberry...I entered PI and then raspberry but it says that its incorrect.

[@efrankphd]

I should have known that the Time Machine was"not" for a Windows PC when I saw that you were using your Mac. However, I still cant access the Raspberry Pi in the network window because the credential password is still not working, and the address is fine. I've tried every password possibility that I can think of and watched hours of so-called work around's, and still nothing. So I'm giving up on openmediavault cuz it's just not working for me.

[@84westy55]

The OMV installation overwrites any static IPs you've previously setup on the Pi. I just followed the installation guide, setup my static IPs, and saw them change in my UniFi console after OMV got up and running.

[@TM-vg4mx]

can you use old mac mini instead? thanks

[@jtayl711]

Is it necessary to use a SATA SSD? Can I use a standard external USB 3 Hard Drive?

[@messing-with-computers]

You can use a standard drive, it will just be a little slower. Nothing deal breaking.

[@1raskumar]

Hello from Ukraine.thank you!

[@messing-with-computers]

Thank you too!

[@flhoest]

Thanks a lot great video !!! ;)

[@messing-with-computers]

Glad you liked it!

[@l3eans]

Has anyone tested this on a RP4 that is also running Pihole and a Cloud Key?

[@84westy55]

I finally picked up a Pi4 2GB after owning and using every previous model and gave the official Raspberry Pi Imager a shot. (www.raspberrypi.org/downloads/) Boy, it's a night-and-day difference to get up and running compared to the usual way. Naturally, it's only good for installing various versions of the Pi OS, so folks will still have to know about Balena, images, etc. if they're going to do more than just a single project, but it's a great first step into the Pi.

[@messing-with-computers]

84Westy - right? I’m having a blast with the pi4. It is very close to being a daily driver as a computer.

[@84westy55]

@@messing-with-computers Since it was so easy to swap OS versions, I installed the full desktop with the recommended apps to test it out. Wow! It's weird to see a full desktop computer boot faster than a phone! It would be absolutely fantastic as a "homework" computer. :)

[@messing-with-computers]

84Westy - works better than outdated full computers for watching videos and KZbin (below 4K of course). Impressive for 3-6 watts.

[@mattsciame7046]

Very helpfull. Thank you

[@messing-with-computers]

You're welcome!

[@DavidWoods_ca]

With regards to that cheap dongle not working well, you might want to look into this. www.raspberrypi.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=28&t=245931

[@messing-with-computers]

Know what - at one point I read this article but couldn’t remember where! I’ll give this a test and see if it fixes my issues. Thanks David!

[@AndreasHasenack]

Have you tried raid 1 with that hard disk dock?

[@messing-with-computers]

Not yet, I’ll add it to the list

[@ship-west176]

I'm not familiar with gigabyte Ethernet, is it eight times faster than gigabit Ethernet.

[@messing-with-computers]

Haha. Yeah, pretty sure I misspoke. Silly bits vs bytes.

[@amegabyte7986]

No need to be a smarty pants.

[@Chris-gv5ge]

I guess this won't perform very well on my Raspberry Pie 1 🤣

[@getoutdoors2693]

Seems like you like buying no name brand hardware.

[@messing-with-computers]

When it is not mission critical I have been known to buy cheap stuff to see how it performs.