Connecting a raspberry pi 5 to 4 20tb hard disks reddit / selfhosted ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3n2el · 2023-12-25 13:17 Hi guys,I want to build a cloud storage with up to 80tb. I'm planning to buy one 20tb hard drive each year and add onto my system. I would be using a raspberry pi 5 with 8gb of ram. Would it bottleneck? If yes, would it bottleneck even with 3 drives? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- jimbajomba · 2023-12-25 13:40 You'll only be able to connect 2 drives via USB3 to the RPi5, and 2 via USB2 to it directly. Unlike the RPi4, I think they've made the speed of each USB port independent now, so it will be quicker, but you'll still limited to USB2 and USB 3 speeds, and the speed the drives themselves can read/write data. If you buy a USB hub you can connect more devices but they will share that connection to the RPi. If you format the drives as part of a ZFS pool, you're looking at around 1GB of memory needed per 1TB of storage you have, or performance may be degraded. Have fun though :-D ---------------------------------------------------------------------- untamedeuphoria · 2023-12-25 13:43 Cannot speak to the compute. But on ram.. depends on what you're doing, but probably. I would think so with ZFS if especially if you run a head on the server. Networking would also be a major bottleneck. I understand the the pi5 has a pcie that can be accessed by the GPIO...? If I were doing this I would want to stick a sata controller on that and avoid dealing with shitty USB controllers (many of which wont show all of the SMART data needed to monitor the drives). This means you're stuck with a 1G port without a viable way to add another or faster port. This makes data transfer a bitch to deal with. I think of the required transfer as a relative requirement to the pool size. Welp, I have a 40TiB pool. I regularly saturate 1G connections. Based on benchmarking, and real world testing, I can saturate a 2.5g port. With 80TiBs... you will hate this when you start using it with aggression. Also, on the USB drive thing. I have totally run into shittons of bottlenecks on things like, single USB controller, four client USB ports. One drive saturates controller and creates bottleneck for the other three ports. USB really does bottleneck quite easily in those kinds of setups. Even on a lot of x86 systems. There are cheaper and better options of SBCs than the pi5. If I were you and still wanted a single board computer for the host, I would not even consider the pi5. You need something with 2.5G network (2X1G could also work). Otherwise you will be bottlenecked quite badly on the read write speeds of a pool like that. You also probably want at least 16G of ram. You can cheap out on the processor a bit. You just need 4 cores and a couple instruction sets for decoding for you legitimate iso file self hosted distrobution server (plex). I forget the current requirements for a good system. But I do remember a lot of SBC processors have them... do a googlefu. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3n2el · 2023-12-25 13:52 Ok thank you ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3n2el · 2023-12-25 13:56 Would an orangepi 5 with 16gbs of ram be a better option? ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Apart_Ad_5993 · 2023-12-25 14:19 I mean at that point, why not just build/purchase a SFF PC. You'll get way more bang for the buck. PIs are great but I wouldn't use it as a NAS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- prairievoice · 2023-12-25 14:45 Get something with proper SATA ports, dont waste your money on halfway solutions using USB and USB to SATA controllers. The performance and reliability difference will be night and day and a lot less hassle. Also RAID or ZFS over USB would be painfully slow. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- lovett1991 · 2023-12-25 15:11 A pi doesn’t seem the right thing for this. Sure it’s got pcie but in an odd form factor without a way to power the drives without another power source. I’d look at the asrock n100 itx board, it’s very low power consumption, has sata (with power) and a normal pcie slot s well as an m.2. Put it in a proper case and it’s x86. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- StabbingHobo · 2023-12-25 15:43 I have a Pi CM4+IO Board running OMV. It’s hosting all my media for Plex server, no issues. Can stream 4K with no buffering, which is fine for my use case. Basically, a dedicated Synology NAS or SFF PC would be better, but only if your use case calls for it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- indiankshitij · 2023-12-25 15:51 Why do you want to go for any low performance arm based solution when for the same price and arguably similar power consumption, you can get an old (maybe used) x86 system which can provide you a much more robust solution? (not being rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious if you have any reasons for this) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3n2el · 2023-12-25 16:16 I don't, it's just that I'm really really new to this space. I quite literally discovered RPI a few months ago and I've been informing myself about SBCs. Now that my RPI 5 has arrived I learned about docker,containers and all this other stuff and I've realized that maybe,just maybe, the pi isn't exactly the best option for me and so I wanted to ask here about it. Btw,thanks for the answers ---------------------------------------------------------------------- neon5k · 2023-12-25 16:23 Just get a nas board with intel n300 and a case psu to go with it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3n2el · 2023-12-25 16:28 Would it be possible to give me some example and/or where I can find information about all this? Thanks ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Aggressive_Win2912 · 2023-12-25 16:31 An odroid h3+ would be pretty cool also, but tbh given the cost you might be better off just getting a cheap used PC ---------------------------------------------------------------------- rolyantrauts · 2023-12-25 16:47 Rpi5 and its single lane of Pcie2.0 is pretty poor for storage and USB bridges are very prone to error. If you are going to spend the money on 20tb harddisks then maybe a Radxa5b with 6 port sata m.2 would be a better idea. Also the Radxa Rock3b has 2‑lane PCIe 3.0 which is the limit to the M.2 cards avail. You can make quite a tidy unit with something like [https://www.ebay.c o.uk/itm/403838642121](https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/403838642121) which is 8bay but use up to 6 with the top 2 bays for SBC and control boards... Thats just a single alternative as also there are some low wattage pico Itx and mini pcs from Intel & amd also and a few other SBC makes to go at. One thing Raspberry have never been very good for is NAS even if attempted many times. Its so much better to have dedicated sata or go the full hog and just get a Asustor Flashstor for £499. I like the Radxa Rock5b due to its 2.5gbe that with a 6 port £20 m.2 sata card is more expensive than a Pi5 but vastly superior as a NAS and also more efficient. The Rock3b is lower cost with 2x 1gbe ethernet similar to OrangePi 5Plus which port aggregation or trunking needs a relatively expensive managed switch, so why I favor for a home network the Radxa Rock5b ---------------------------------------------------------------------- DarrenRainey · 2023-12-25 16:52 Building a mini server would probally be best also if your planning on storing that much stuff I would probally start with atleast 2 drives in RAID since if that drive dies you lose everything. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- indiankshitij · 2023-12-25 19:21 I recently started my home server setup on raspberry Pi 4 as well... I realised a bit late as well that I could have gotten a cheap used pc instead as well. But pies are fun for experiments and learning. I started offby hosting vault warden and then created a vpn and now I recently started hosting immich on rpi 4 as well. That's when I realised that maybe rpi4 is not really powerful enough for my needs. Although it is still serving me well enough. I don't think rpi is powerful enough to be a proper nas system. I'd suggest reading a bit more about nas and homelabs and self hosting in general before setting up anything long term. Yes it's going to be a lot to take in, I'm still learning and taking in a lot of stuff as well but I'm enjoying it. Hope you do too. Also, I'm not sure if it's possible to add one drive at a time (I'm sure it's possible but I don't think I'd suggest it - the reason to build a nas is to have robust and performant storage accessible from anywhere - robustness for me would be resiliancy to have no data loss in the event of a drive failure and better yet 2 drives failing. I don't think it's possible to add more drives once a file system has been created with a redundancy setup). People on this sub can surely pitch in and highlight if I'm wrong - it is possible that I'm wrong, so please do your research. Happy tinkering ---------------------------------------------------------------------- chazragg · 2023-12-25 19:40 https://www.serverbuilds.net/ I used this when building my nas ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wmantly · 2023-12-25 20:41 Get an HP DL360 g8 or g9. They are pretty power efficient, far, far more powerful than a pi and will have 10-50 times the RAM. You get started with one from eBay for like $100 ---------------------------------------------------------------------- StabbingHobo · 2023-12-26 01:42 The point wasn’t that you can do better. Just that, for a NAS - they can be quite good. Provided your workflow doesn’t require higher throughput, or running additional containers alongside your NAS OS. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- PunyDev · 2023-12-26 06:15 im curious how power efficient is this, such as during idle and when under moderate load. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- bubblegumpuma · 2023-12-26 06:28 Don't get the Pi (or most any other ARM SBC, really) specifically for a NAS. If you're going to be connecting up SATA hard drives, you should get something that has SATA ports, or else you're going to be spending way too much money on adapters and such to come out with a subpar setup. Something like a tower form factor Dell Optiplex or Precision, HP Prodesk / Elitedesk, or Lenovo Thinkcentre that has actual SATA ports and mounting spots for 3.5" drives will be way better, and if you get them used, they are very competitive in cost with single board computers. And yes, USB 3.0 bottlenecks a SATA bus. The drive itself, probably not, but you're also bottlenecked by gigabit networking either way. That said, a Raspberry Pi is a great prototyping platform and good for things such as home automation projects, so if you've got it, keep it in your back pocket and keep on the lookout for some cool projects you can test or set up on there. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- sk-sakul · 2023-12-26 13:02 So you want to hook $1200 of storage to $100 board... ---------------------------------------------------------------------- d3n2el · 2023-12-26 13:05 Yeah, that isn't a good idea. I'm now trying to get a refurbished dell optiplex with a i5 8500 or a i3 8100. To be completely honest,I can sacrifice a bit of space, 80tb is best case scenario. You can look at my other posts for more information if you'd like ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Apart_Ad_5993 · 2023-12-26 17:11 And they're loud as fuck. I have just white box PC stuff and it does the job with no noise at all. Rack servers were never designed to be running in homes. We kind of went from PI to a G8, where something in the middle of the road is better suited. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- wmantly · 2023-12-26 17:39 I have a DL360 g8 with dual 12core CPU, 192GB ram, 4 SSD and a quadro p2000(only used by emby and zone minder for video transcoding) running about 20 containers and 3 VM's. 24 hr average power is a bit over 100w. It is true they can be loud, but you don't have to have it in your living room. They can be stashed away standing upright in the back of a closet. I have several DL class boxes and they don't mind being hot at all. Mine spend all summer at like 90c.