Make a Raspberry Pi NAS
Once I started making these videos, I immediately ran into storage issues. My old laptop I use to edit only has a 128GB solid state drive, and this isn’t even big enough to edit a long clip on so I needed to get an external drive.
This works, but I also want to have a backup. Now, the ideal setup would be a NAS with RAID, but I don’t have budget for that. I looked around and found what I do have is a Raspberry Pi and an old external drive. After some research I also came across something called Open Media Vault (OMV). OMV is a package available for the Raspberry Pi (among other platforms) that has some pretty powerful storage management options and a web interface for configuration.
Step 1
To prepare to get OMV up and running, make sure that you have installed Raspbian and have SSH access. I have done a detailed description on how to to that here:
Step 2
Now that you have Raspberry Pi up and running, it’s time to get going with the installation of OMV.
Start by making sure your Raspberry Pi is up to date with the following commands:
sudo apt update
and then
sudo apt upgrade
This could take some time.
Step 3
Once the upgrades have all be applied, use the following command to install the OMV packages on your Raspberry Pi:
wget -O – https://raw.githubusercontent.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/master/install | sudo bash
This installation is quite lengthly, so give it some time.
Once complete restart your Pi:
sudo reboot
Step 4
OMV is now installed! So, now we need to do some basic configuration to get it up and running.
Log into your Raspberry Pi using a web browser by entering its IP address. You will be greeted with a login screen for OMV. The login details are:
User: admin
Password: openmediavault
Step 5
The first thing you are going to want to do is change the auto logout time, otherwise you will keep getting kicked off. Do this by clicking (on the left hand side):
General Settings/Web Administration
Change Auto Logout to Disabled
Click Save
Then change the default login password, otherwise anyone will have access to your stuff. Do this by clicking (on the left hand side):
General Settings/Web Administrator Password
Enter a new password, and click Save.
Note:
When you make changes you will get a popup at the top saying that the configuration has changed and that you need to apply the settings. You must click apply each time. This can be irritating and take some time, but you just need to deal with it.
Step 6
If you are going to want to have different users access different shared folders, you should now create those users.
Click on Users and click Add.
Give the user a name and password and click Save.
You will be able to assign this user to particular shares later on.
Step 7
Next you are going to need to setup your shares.
Start by clicking Disks and you will see the disks connected to your Pi. One will be the SD card, and then you should also see your external drive(s).
To get a fresh start, select your external disk and click Wipe.
Note: This will erase all your data!
Step 8
Once your disk is erases, we need set up the file system for it.
Click on File Systems
Here you will see your the partitions on the disks on your Pi. We are going to add your external drive here.
Click Create and select the external drive you want to share. Give it a name, as select ‘EXT4’ as the file system. Then click Ok.
You will get a confirmation popup, click Yes.
This can take hours, depending on the size of the drive, so don’t sit and wait. Just check back every 30min or so.
Step 9
Eventually your disk will be initiated.
Once that is done, make sure it is mounted so you can used it.
Now to create the shared folders. Click Shared Folders and then Add.
Now you can create a folder that will be available on your network. Pick a name, and then under Device select your external drive.
Under Permissions select Everyone. You can change and customise this later if need be.
Then click Save.
You can create as many shared folders as you choose, and you can assign different users to these folders.
Step 10
We are almost there!
We need to enable the Samba service and assign shares to it. To do this, click on SMB and then click the slider that says Enable.
Then click Save.
Lastly, still on the SMB menu, click the Shares tab.
Here you can click Add and select the folder that you want to share on your network.
Then click Save.
And thats it! You now have created a shared network folder on using your Raspberry Pi that should be available to devices on your network!
Materials
A Raspberry Pi 3 or newer (I used a 2B, and while it worked, the transfer speeds were slow. This is because the ethernet port and USB ports use a common controller, and this means traffic has to be split. I think that this was changed around the Pi 3, when onboard WiFi was introduced)
An SD Card (minimum 8GM)
A 5V PSU for the Raspberry Pi (I used a 1A cellphone charger)
External Hard Drive with Power Supply (the power from the onboard USB is limited). This is going to need to get formatted to a Linux file system, so make sure you have a backup.
Optional:
A WiFi Dongle