Thanks Michael for taking look at our NAS devices! We love listening to all types of comments, whether they be praise, questions, suggestions and criticism. Feel free to send a reply and we will happily answer! Thanks again!
Thank you for the opporunity to try it out! I really enjoyed making this video and trying to build my own contender. The only thing I really questioned when putting it together was why the Drivestor 4 couldn't be made compatible with 2.5" drives like the Pro version? Obviously the drive bays are designed around 3.5" drives, but it seemed to me like 2.5" drives fitted into the bays perfectly to secure with two screws on one side. So they would only require a standoff or small metal bracket to secure the opposite side. Not really a complaint, just something I noticed when putting it together.
@@MichaelKlements Well... Between the hardware performance limitations and lower retail cost, we need to keep our support resources from being stretched to keep the experience good for everyone. We haven't locked it, so you can put an SSD into it if you want and it will work. But adding SSDs to a NAS that likely won't benefit much from their capabilities as well as asking all of our partners to provide SSDs to test and then having to support customers that don't use the correct bracket because they are relatively rare would provide a subpar experience. This NAS is not a jack of all trades, but instead, a master of one.
That's great. It makes sense to keep the cost down, being one of your entry level products, and it's good to hear that you only release products/features that have been properly tested!
That's a beautiful custom NAS build! With a CM4, you may be able to eke out a bit more performance (probably closer to 100 MB/sec writes, 110 MB/sec reads) since you could use native SATA, and you could also make it more complex with a 2.5 Gbps PCIe network adapter... but you end up with diminishing returns (and higher costs!). I think you come to the same conclusion that if you need the performance and/or reliability (and don't want to DIY with all the little struggles that comes with), a prebuilt NAS is still worth the extra cost. Especially for this channel, where I'm sure you have enough video content that you need something you can just throw down and depend on! Just make sure you have a 2nd backup for anything important (or full 3-2-1).
Thanks for the tip on the CM4 - I was also thinking of trying a similar build on the Zimaboard as it's got two SATA ports and a PCIe 2.0 x 4 slot, so drives and 2.5 Gbps networking should be easy to implement. I should have mentioned the 3-2-1 backup rule, it's going to be much easier to implement regular on and off-site backups with a NAS now as well.
@@anubhavmuku96 But of course! I think Michael's finished builds are the things I imagine what I could make something look like in the end ... but I never do and it's just a pile of components and cables on my desk lol Might be interesting to sell kits through Etsy or something. I know a few people who'd love to have a nice acrylic case they could order to build their own little Pi NAS that looks beautiful.
You can get more speed out of the drives on the Pi by enabling "write cache" in OMV. Under "Storage > Disks" and edit every drive. I am getting on my Pi4 4GB around 170mb/s. On small files (storing 3D Print files on it). I even set up a pseudo Raid1. Set up 2 Storages, one you write too, the 2nd for the backups. Under Services > Rsync set up a task (cronjob) to sync everything from drive 1 to drive 2, on the frequent you want. This is how i am running my PiOMV.
Yep. Tried the Pi4. Tried a CM4 with m.2 RAID card. The best DIY solution continues to be old PC hardware. Sleep it when not in use and overall power should be about the same as a Pi NAS.
@@MichaelKlements I use the "autosuspend" service for Linux to sleep my NAS. WOL is the simplest method to wake. If you want totally seamless, there is also something called "Bonjour Sleep Proxy" that does some network tricks to wake the server as soon as you access a file share or ssh to the server. It is an Apple technology but there is a Linux port and I have used it in the past.
One thing that concerns me is longevity of software support, security patches etc from the NAS vendor. If vendor desupports a device, you're on your own. Wheras RPi open source will usually have patches available.
If you can get ahold of one, the RasPi CM4 is much more suited for use as a NAS. There are 3rd party carrier boards with the needed hardware baked in or for a more custom build there's the official carrier board. If you want to really dig in and learn a lot of neat things, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has published the info you need to design your own carrier board for a completely custom setup. While it's not an afternoon project, it's also easier than you'd expect.
Thanks for the tip! They definitely do open up a few more possabilities for a purpose built NAS. I don't think I'm feelling brave enough to try designing my own carrier board just yet, but maybe one day.
That's a pretty and neat little Pi NAS, sadly I don't have access to a laser cutter so that's not a proposition for me. My approach, after unsatisfactory results with proprietary single bay backup drives, has been to re-purpose an old PC, first attempt using FreeNAS but, with my non-existent Linux skills that was way too complicated. Instead, I went with a Windows configuration and RAID (2x4TB) which is much more into my tech skills zone. Living in a tropical environment, cooling wasn't straightforward so I was plagued with system crashes and long times to recover the RAID sync. So, I solved that by ditching the RAID and installed FreeFileSync, added a better case fan and overheating problem eliminated. I mention FreeFileSync in the context of your Pi config only allowing 2 x USB connections and therefore separate disk volumes. I've found FFS to be simple and reliable.
After extensive use of both raspberry pi nas & an asustor nas myself, I will ALWAYS & in future use the raspberry pi! Youre not locked into broken asustor management ('adm') software, the RPi recieves more freq security & os patches & the RPi community is 1000x more helpful. Ive never had an issue with hdd/usb speeds, or streaming across my wifi network; Ive had the RPi4b transcode & stream a video (via kodi) across my network, zero buffer or issues. The RPi is cheaper too.
Very nice comparison. I am myself using a Pi Based NAS mainly because, I just use my NAS for casual data sharing, running services like jDownloader, transmission, PhotoPrism etc and also using Syncthing to backup my MacBook data folder in real time. It serves my purpose and as I bought my Pi long time back, it is very cost effective. But I recommend using a dedicated NAS for heavier usage or making something with little bit powerful CPU and motherboard and at-least a 2.5G networking. BTW - I really liked your Pi Case. I wanted to make something like that for my Pi but I was too confused on how to design so that they would fit properly on sides. I ended up making a 3D Printed case and using black transparent acrylic on the side. I will definitely try to make acrylic one now. It looks way cooler than my 3D Printed one. Also I am using same display and showing Date/Time/IP/CPU/Memory and Temp. If you would like then I can share my python script with you.
That another nice feature of a Pi NAS, being able to run a fairly broad range of other services on the Pi alongside the NAS software. Definitely have a try at it, it's pretty easy to design 2D parts once you get the hang of it. I've put this design up on my blog so you can download the design as a starting point if you'd like.
@@MichaelKlements Thanks. I am using 2 smaller 2.5" hard disk and I have removed USB 3.0 ports and soldered SATA ports directly to usb 3.0 in pi to remove all cables. I am also using one small SMPS to power Pi and USB HDD. The only cable now is power cable and ethernet. (I hate wires) I saw your tutorial on 2D designing when going through the video and will definitely give it a try. Thanks a lot for such amazing content.
I used the same setup as you except I only had one drive discoverable on the network and I used the sync option in OMV to setup a sync to the second drive every 15 minutes. Essentially a redundant workaround.
OMV doesn't support anymore (it did a long time ago) creating a raid array using usb drives, but yet, you can still have an array using OMV, but you need to create the array in terminal using mdadm, and after you create the array it will be available in OMV to be selected. I also built my personal NAS a few months ago, using also a Pi4 and i am really happy with it and i won't change for a proprietary solution. For me the most important reasons were budget, power consumption and noise, so i used 2x 2.5" Western Digital NAS Drives 1Tb in RAID 1 using OMV, and it is really great, but for someone who cares more with performance a proprietary system is the way to go. Great job in the enclosure and keep the good work.
I read up that it was possible to configure a RAID array through the terminal, thanks for confirming this. Thanks for sharing your setup and for the support!
I would go with the Raspberry for portability and would use SSDs for storage. I believe that there are several students that study Graphic Design or Animation that would love to have something like the Raspberry NAS to keep projects for classes on. I had a Western Digital external HD to store things on, but it got knocked off a desk and the arm ended up out of alignment and I lost a year's worth of schoolwork. Graphic Design files tend to run large, especially for good Photoshop work (The image and all the different layers to comprise the finished look).
You compared a 2 independent drive configuration with 1G Ethernet on the Pi to a 4 drive raid 5 configuration with 2.5G Ethernet on the Drivestor. The Pi is completely bottlenecked at the 1G E. It is common for many NAS devices to be limited by network speed. Most people's home devices accessing a NAS aren't going to benefit from the NAS having more then 1G E. The big problem with this Pi config is the lack of RAID or any redundancy. (edited to correct Pi RAID and network config)
@@dav1dsm1th you're right. early in the video the Ethernet port was clearly empty, he doesn't mention plugging it in or the speed, but later in the video, the Ethernet cable is present. I am pretty sure the pie has 1G Ethernet vs the 2.5G E on the other device which he mentioned at 16:35. Also, while looking for the pie network I noticed he says the pie is NOT in RAID mode because the NAS software he is using doesn't support it.
RAID 0 (striping) is not recommend for reliability and redundancy And also raid 5 on the drivestor it's like raid 1 Because raid 5 is faster, so you need to Compare apples to apples.. Also, the USB 3 and lan interface on the raspberry pi shared the same bus. The USB 3 speed is 5Gbps..
Actually our RAID 1 is faster. This ARM chip is in many ways similar to the Pi and while it comes bundled with 2.5GbE, similar limitations mean we need to place a switch for the SATA so they end up sharing bandwidth.
@@ASUSTOR_YT not exactly, RAID 0 With 2 Drives: Read speed gain = *2 Write speed gain = *2 RAID 5 With 4 Drive: Read speed gain = *3 Write speed gain = *1 The comparison is not equal Neet to compare the same size and number of drives and the same raid.
@@ASUSTOR_YT Hey, you guys don't know what your talking about. It's not like you designed it or built and tested it in house before marketing it. I think Haim knows what he's about /s
Great video. thanks! I will definitely be rewatching this video a few more times as I am planning to make a Pi NAS myself. I love the look of the Pi NAS case but wonder why you left the cables hanging out the back. If the case were a few inches deeper you could enclose the USB adapters, have a neater look and some protection for the connectors. One thing that is worth considering in deciding between these two NAS is how much performance (drive speed) you really need. I currently back up to a single large USB3 drive using ChronoSync on a Mac. It does incremental backups (and many other things including scheduled backups) and so the time it takes to back up a video project that is in progress is minimal. Also if you use a utility that backups overnight performance is almost irrelevant as it is using downtime to sync.On the other hand if you are moving files on and off the NAS frequently then performance would be very important.
Thanks for the suggestion to extend the enclosure to cover the cables as well, this would definitely make the NAS look a lot neater. Yes agreed, people get fixated on read and write speeds on a NAS without considering their actual use case. My video on the NAS on a Pi Zero is a good example of this, people are quick to point out the low data transfer speed but if you're using it for general office documents and even a few photos here and there then you probably won't even notice the speed.
You forgot to include the cost of the laser cutting machine for most of us in the world that don't own one. ;) Perhaps costing in an off the shelf Pi Nas case would have been a better comparison and using only 2 drives in the ASUS. Plus using a 2.5Gbit Ethernet for the raspberry pi. Good video production but the comparisons were not really fair.
I did something similar using a mini-stx motherboard, i5-6400, 16gb ddr4 sodimm and 2x 3.5 10tb wd red hard drives. It has a male 3.5 in hd power (like a thin mini itx motherboard) that looks a lot cleaner cable wise.
Soooo....I need to add in the cost of a 3D printer if I'm going to build my own. For my situation the Drivestor is a better choice. Thank you for this video, I'm trying to get out of the Google/Microsoft/Dropbox cloud, and this looks like an ideal starter home cloud. Does the Drivestor software support a home cloud setup, or would I need to use a different software package? A video breaking this down would be very helpful. Subbed! (I like your presentation style.)
Another great vid. I have a Pi NAS with only 500GB and had no problems with it. I found it more reliable than my WD My Cloud. I plan to build your version, an upgrade for me. Though the Asustor Drivestor 4 was a stronger performer, I believe for the average person, the DIY version is more bang for your buck. Great work on the case as well.
Good video but you cant compare a RAID 5 performance with a Single drive. The PI its limited by its HW and OS sadly but its a very good way to start a NAS at home
Yes you can build your own if what you are after is a traditional NAS and you will be end up with better hardware (more ram, better CPU) for cheaper. But what you won't be getting is the proprietary software that comes with the big NAS providers such as in the case of photo storage. Synology offers Photos, QNAP QuMaggie and Asustor Photo AI. All these systems also offer native mobile phone apps to give you a true Google photos replacement. Now you can (sort of) get around this depending on your use case. Plex can run on just about anything, so can applications like Pihole, and you will find alternatives like Photoprism out there which are still very decent. Photoprism even has facial recognition. I like the idea of using a professional NAS, but I don't like how these manufacturers seem to distribute the costs to include their OS and offerings so you end up with less than optimal hardware.
Yeah, the software is something often not factored in to the overall cost of proprietary systems. I'd probably rather pay for the software as part of the upfront hardware cost than have to pay for a software license or monthly subscription afterwards.
@@MichaelKlements Very true. It just causes some confusion initially when you're looking at systems like Synology where you're paying a premium for mediocre hardware compared to some of the mini PC's that can be bought in that price range, and you're not getting any disks with it. It comes across as almost a barebone system but kind of expensive. What's not obvious is that a lot of that premium cost for Synology is actually for purchase of the included software. That's all proprietary, solid, well researched and established. Native inhouse solutions that aren't running in emulation mode. But on this point I have to remind myself we're talking about a NAS - literally a solution devised for storage. If anyone is buying these to actually run most of these services on offer, they would be better off just buying (or building) a dedicated server with all the bells and whistles. It would cost around the same and although more power hungry wouldn't struggle to run an array of services that weren't designed to run on a NAS. I'm getting to that stage where I just want a solution that works with the least amount of hassle, without much tinkering or risk and it's a tossup between Synology or Qnap.
Cool and simple project, only one question... What if i wanted to 3d print the case? Did you make an STL file of the design? If not, can you please do it?
This case is laser cut from acrylic, so I don't have a 3D print design for it. I am working on a new Pi 5 NAS project which should be available in a couple of weeks which will be 3D printable.
@Michael Klements Do you have any suggestion for a cheap and reliable solution, like an enclosure for two 3.5" hard drives in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi?
In 2020, I was looking for a NAS but they were too expensive.. I so went the Pi way My Pi NAS is a Pi 4 with 3 USB HDDs (WD_Black P10, they were the cheapest at the time) & OMV 6. - two 4TB HDD 2.5" USB connected to the USB 3.0 ports (and external USB brick for more power) - one 2TB HDD 2.5" USB connected to the USB 2.0 port I setup rsync with the two 4TB, runs every night, that way I have a recent backup if something ever happens. I just need to replace the faulty drive and we are up an running again :) Sequencial write speeds (a 8GB video file) averages around 100/110 MB/s (to both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 HDD). Not bad for a budget NAS, HDD connected to my PC via USB 3.0 it's only 20/30 MB/s faster
If you've got the time to tinker with it and you're happy with slightly lower speeds then a Pi NAS is a pretty good option. OMV also has a really good set of features.
A very interesting video. Please can you tell me what version of the Pi Operating System you used, all the tutorials I have seen on OMV use the "lite" version without the graphical desktop.
@@MichaelKlements Hah! Thought I recognized the accent, I'm also South African, though still in the homeland. Love the channel man, gonna do a lil Pi NAS project in December based on your specs. Thanks for channel man.
Thanks for making this video, although I have followed the same steps with RPI3B+, but after installing the OMV , I am unable to connect with the WiFi network from my RPi, would please help me with that. Thanks again
OMV disables the WiFi network after installation, you need to force it on before rebooting. I talk about this in this video - ruclips.net/video/gyOHTZvhnxY/видео.html
Did you actually say that there shouldn't be any data loss with the pi as long as the drives remain good? The whole review seemed to be apples to oranges some it is raid vs non-raid.
Great video. Although I know this may have been asked before and I've been looking all over the forums, but how are you able to get around 50MB/s or more during transfer on the RPi4 NAS? I just recently set mine up with the same structure but my transfer speeds are atrocious, something between 2-7MB/s. Any advice would be most appreciated
I didn't really do anything other than the basic OMV setup - this setup hasn't been optimised in any way. Are you running the drives in the same configuration with no RAID? Perhaps it is a hardware limiation with the SATA to USB adapters that you're using? I've used some of these that have provided terrible transfer speeds.
Not with the adaptors that I used, they just worked out of the box. I only had the Pi NAS running for about a week, so I'm not sure long term, but didn't have any trouble in that time period.
im trying to do exactly this, but I cannot find a case that supports 3.5" drives and a pi... I found a janky drive rack I am currently planning to drill holes on the top for my pi... Not completely satisfied, but I can run a 140mm fan across everything. (I already have a spare noctua)
Have you been able to find something that works? Currently looking for the same thing. So far the best option seems to be this same style acrylic "test bench for 3.5 inch hdd" from ebay. Then just just mount the pi to it and done
@@minergate4066 I did!, but I ended up taking a different route for 3.5 Inch drives. I got an Odroid Hc4 which has native sata. I used that with a internal HDD cage with a built in fan mount. Then I modded a metal HDD 2.5 to 3.5" adapter to mount the odroid inside the cage. ... so now I have a 2x 3.5" drive nas on my network... For my raspberry pi, I got a single m.2 daughter board so now it boots from a 500gb m.2 and I use it for projects.
@@minergate4066 No Problem. I was looking for something that was minimal cost but had the best performance. Not including the drives, i built the nas for about $100 and it performs really well. The pi4 and down options all revolved around a USB solution, but I don't think that is a good long term solution. The odroid Hc4 Also uses less power at idle which is very nice too.
Great video! The Asustor clearly wins for most applications which is not really a big surrprise. In your cost comparison you use $75 for the Pi which is probably unrealistic at this point but your overall analysis is right on the money. The lack of RAID on the Pi is a major disadvantage. I really love your cases btw. Wish I could afford a laser cutter. I just recently got my first Pi and I've really enjoyed your videos.
Luckily the Pi's I've got were all bought a couple of years ago, but yes, getting Pis at list price at the moment is pretty unusual. Thank you for the support! Take a look at some K40 laser cutter options online, you can often pick them up for $300-$400. It's a good starting machine and it's served me well for three years or so.
Both work very well! We work closely with our hard drive partners to maintain performance and compatibility. Ironwolf Pros are somewhat faster and contain better warranties.
You can get yourself a HP Gen8 microserver from the popular auction website and upgrade it to max configuration with a 45W 4 core, 8 thread Xeon and 16GB of memory for about the same price as the Asus NAS, its runs ZFS software RAID like a champ and it can be further expanded. Asus are going to need to up the specification a bit on the units to make them more useful, I'd like to see 8+ core CPU's and 16-32GB of memory, speaking personally, if I was going to buy that sort of thing.
I have a HP Gen8 microserver that I bought from Amazon years ago. I've upgraded the processor to a Xeon instead of the Pentium CPU that it came with. 7 years old and still running!
@@MichaelKlements comparing 4 drive raid to single-drive, when you can raid them, the whole point of a nas is to remove big noisy drives from your working area, otherwise you can just network-share a drive
Raid is one aspect of a NAS, people run a NAS for a range of reasons and I don't think the noise of the drives is very high up on the list of reasons why.
Really..? Seriously!? So the conclusion you come to is, that the Asus is faster due to the 2.5 Gigabit LAN?!? To be honest, i'm really, really astounded by the fact, that you didn't do a comparison *with both being connected to 1GB LAN!!* I mean.... how else would you compare those two devices that have this clear difference? For me at least, 1GB vs. 2.5GB LAN was NOT, what i was curious about.... it was *Pi vs. Asus with the same drives and same connection.* Am i the only one.....? Needless to say, that "most" (...) people won't have 2.5GB LAN in use at home yet... from the switch(es) to all kinds of devices - though getting a 2.5GB NAS could be a good starting point for that, sure.
Thanks Michael for taking look at our NAS devices! We love listening to all types of comments, whether they be praise, questions, suggestions and criticism. Feel free to send a reply and we will happily answer! Thanks again!
Nice that you listen to feedback compared to other companies
@@ahyaan2552 Thank you for your reply! We strive to always improve!
Thank you for the opporunity to try it out! I really enjoyed making this video and trying to build my own contender.
The only thing I really questioned when putting it together was why the Drivestor 4 couldn't be made compatible with 2.5" drives like the Pro version? Obviously the drive bays are designed around 3.5" drives, but it seemed to me like 2.5" drives fitted into the bays perfectly to secure with two screws on one side. So they would only require a standoff or small metal bracket to secure the opposite side. Not really a complaint, just something I noticed when putting it together.
@@MichaelKlements Well... Between the hardware performance limitations and lower retail cost, we need to keep our support resources from being stretched to keep the experience good for everyone. We haven't locked it, so you can put an SSD into it if you want and it will work. But adding SSDs to a NAS that likely won't benefit much from their capabilities as well as asking all of our partners to provide SSDs to test and then having to support customers that don't use the correct bracket because they are relatively rare would provide a subpar experience. This NAS is not a jack of all trades, but instead, a master of one.
That's great. It makes sense to keep the cost down, being one of your entry level products, and it's good to hear that you only release products/features that have been properly tested!
That's a beautiful custom NAS build! With a CM4, you may be able to eke out a bit more performance (probably closer to 100 MB/sec writes, 110 MB/sec reads) since you could use native SATA, and you could also make it more complex with a 2.5 Gbps PCIe network adapter... but you end up with diminishing returns (and higher costs!).
I think you come to the same conclusion that if you need the performance and/or reliability (and don't want to DIY with all the little struggles that comes with), a prebuilt NAS is still worth the extra cost.
Especially for this channel, where I'm sure you have enough video content that you need something you can just throw down and depend on! Just make sure you have a 2nd backup for anything important (or full 3-2-1).
I had a feeling I would see you here xD
Thanks for the tip on the CM4 - I was also thinking of trying a similar build on the Zimaboard as it's got two SATA ports and a PCIe 2.0 x 4 slot, so drives and 2.5 Gbps networking should be easy to implement.
I should have mentioned the 3-2-1 backup rule, it's going to be much easier to implement regular on and off-site backups with a NAS now as well.
@@anubhavmuku96 But of course! I think Michael's finished builds are the things I imagine what I could make something look like in the end ... but I never do and it's just a pile of components and cables on my desk lol
Might be interesting to sell kits through Etsy or something. I know a few people who'd love to have a nice acrylic case they could order to build their own little Pi NAS that looks beautiful.
@@JeffGeerling i totally agree yith you, if Michael could sell those i would probably buy, they look great.
@Jeff Geerling next time you've got a pile of components and cables, let me know. It would be great to try and make something up for them.
You can get more speed out of the drives on the Pi by enabling "write cache" in OMV. Under "Storage > Disks" and edit every drive. I am getting on my Pi4 4GB around 170mb/s. On small files (storing 3D Print files on it).
I even set up a pseudo Raid1. Set up 2 Storages, one you write too, the 2nd for the backups. Under Services > Rsync set up a task (cronjob) to sync everything from drive 1 to drive 2, on the frequent you want. This is how i am running my PiOMV.
I've literally been looking at doing this myself so this is the perfect video comparison I needed
Yep. Tried the Pi4. Tried a CM4 with m.2 RAID card. The best DIY solution continues to be old PC hardware. Sleep it when not in use and overall power should be about the same as a Pi NAS.
How are you implementing the sleep while not in use? Is it automatic, using wake on LAN?
@@MichaelKlements I use the "autosuspend" service for Linux to sleep my NAS. WOL is the simplest method to wake. If you want totally seamless, there is also something called "Bonjour Sleep Proxy" that does some network tricks to wake the server as soon as you access a file share or ssh to the server. It is an Apple technology but there is a Linux port and I have used it in the past.
Thanks for sharing those, I'll definitely look into them
Asustor NAS with 2 drives is $560 ($830-$270=$560)
Almost the same as the Pi but with much less time investment.
One thing that concerns me is longevity of software support, security patches etc from the NAS vendor. If vendor desupports a device, you're on your own. Wheras RPi open source will usually have patches available.
If you can get ahold of one, the RasPi CM4 is much more suited for use as a NAS. There are 3rd party carrier boards with the needed hardware baked in or for a more custom build there's the official carrier board. If you want to really dig in and learn a lot of neat things, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has published the info you need to design your own carrier board for a completely custom setup. While it's not an afternoon project, it's also easier than you'd expect.
Thanks for the tip! They definitely do open up a few more possabilities for a purpose built NAS.
I don't think I'm feelling brave enough to try designing my own carrier board just yet, but maybe one day.
That's a pretty and neat little Pi NAS, sadly I don't have access to a laser cutter so that's not a proposition for me. My approach, after unsatisfactory results with proprietary single bay backup drives, has been to re-purpose an old PC, first attempt using FreeNAS but, with my non-existent Linux skills that was way too complicated. Instead, I went with a Windows configuration and RAID (2x4TB) which is much more into my tech skills zone. Living in a tropical environment, cooling wasn't straightforward so I was plagued with system crashes and long times to recover the RAID sync. So, I solved that by ditching the RAID and installed FreeFileSync, added a better case fan and overheating problem eliminated.
I mention FreeFileSync in the context of your Pi config only allowing 2 x USB connections and therefore separate disk volumes. I've found FFS to be simple and reliable.
After extensive use of both raspberry pi nas & an asustor nas myself, I will ALWAYS & in future use the raspberry pi! Youre not locked into broken asustor management ('adm') software, the RPi recieves more freq security & os patches & the RPi community is 1000x more helpful. Ive never had an issue with hdd/usb speeds, or streaming across my wifi network; Ive had the RPi4b transcode & stream a video (via kodi) across my network, zero buffer or issues. The RPi is cheaper too.
Very nice comparison. I am myself using a Pi Based NAS mainly because, I just use my NAS for casual data sharing, running services like jDownloader, transmission, PhotoPrism etc and also using Syncthing to backup my MacBook data folder in real time. It serves my purpose and as I bought my Pi long time back, it is very cost effective. But I recommend using a dedicated NAS for heavier usage or making something with little bit powerful CPU and motherboard and at-least a 2.5G networking.
BTW - I really liked your Pi Case. I wanted to make something like that for my Pi but I was too confused on how to design so that they would fit properly on sides. I ended up making a 3D Printed case and using black transparent acrylic on the side. I will definitely try to make acrylic one now. It looks way cooler than my 3D Printed one.
Also I am using same display and showing Date/Time/IP/CPU/Memory and Temp. If you would like then I can share my python script with you.
That another nice feature of a Pi NAS, being able to run a fairly broad range of other services on the Pi alongside the NAS software.
Definitely have a try at it, it's pretty easy to design 2D parts once you get the hang of it. I've put this design up on my blog so you can download the design as a starting point if you'd like.
@@MichaelKlements Thanks. I am using 2 smaller 2.5" hard disk and I have removed USB 3.0 ports and soldered SATA ports directly to usb 3.0 in pi to remove all cables. I am also using one small SMPS to power Pi and USB HDD. The only cable now is power cable and ethernet. (I hate wires)
I saw your tutorial on 2D designing when going through the video and will definitely give it a try. Thanks a lot for such amazing content.
I used the same setup as you except I only had one drive discoverable on the network and I used the sync option in OMV to setup a sync to the second drive every 15 minutes. Essentially a redundant workaround.
The price is even closer than you share. The two bay Drivestor is like $179
OMV doesn't support anymore (it did a long time ago) creating a raid array using usb drives, but yet, you can still have an array using OMV, but you need to create the array in terminal using mdadm, and after you create the array it will be available in OMV to be selected.
I also built my personal NAS a few months ago, using also a Pi4 and i am really happy with it and i won't change for a proprietary solution.
For me the most important reasons were budget, power consumption and noise, so i used 2x 2.5" Western Digital NAS Drives 1Tb in RAID 1 using OMV, and it is really great, but for someone who cares more with performance a proprietary system is the way to go.
Great job in the enclosure and keep the good work.
I read up that it was possible to configure a RAID array through the terminal, thanks for confirming this.
Thanks for sharing your setup and for the support!
Fascinating and thanks. The laser cut case was a very cool additional part of the project.
Best comparation ever!!! Thank you for that.
Even if it’s easier and some times better to buy a premade nas it’s so much more fun to build your own
I would go with the Raspberry for portability and would use SSDs for storage. I believe that there are several students that study Graphic Design or Animation that would love to have something like the Raspberry NAS to keep projects for classes on. I had a Western Digital external HD to store things on, but it got knocked off a desk and the arm ended up out of alignment and I lost a year's worth of schoolwork. Graphic Design files tend to run large, especially for good Photoshop work (The image and all the different layers to comprise the finished look).
You compared a 2 independent drive configuration with 1G Ethernet on the Pi to a 4 drive raid 5 configuration with 2.5G Ethernet on the Drivestor. The Pi is completely bottlenecked at the 1G E. It is common for many NAS devices to be limited by network speed. Most people's home devices accessing a NAS aren't going to benefit from the NAS having more then 1G E. The big problem with this Pi config is the lack of RAID or any redundancy. (edited to correct Pi RAID and network config)
@@dav1dsm1th you're right. early in the video the Ethernet port was clearly empty, he doesn't mention plugging it in or the speed, but later in the video, the Ethernet cable is present. I am pretty sure the pie has 1G Ethernet vs the 2.5G E on the other device which he mentioned at 16:35. Also, while looking for the pie network I noticed he says the pie is NOT in RAID mode because the NAS software he is using doesn't support it.
That Pi case is sweet
Thanks you for nice videos. I love your editing. love the background music and detailed data(specially power consumption) . take love 💖💖
RAID 0 (striping) is not recommend for reliability and redundancy
And also raid 5 on the drivestor it's like raid 1
Because raid 5 is faster, so you need to Compare apples to apples..
Also, the USB 3 and lan interface on the raspberry pi shared the same bus.
The USB 3 speed is 5Gbps..
Actually our RAID 1 is faster. This ARM chip is in many ways similar to the Pi and while it comes bundled with 2.5GbE, similar limitations mean we need to place a switch for the SATA so they end up sharing bandwidth.
@@ASUSTOR_YT not exactly, RAID 0 With 2 Drives:
Read speed gain = *2
Write speed gain = *2
RAID 5 With 4 Drive:
Read speed gain = *3
Write speed gain = *1
The comparison is not equal
Neet to compare the same size and number of drives and the same raid.
@@HaimPeretz Umm.... Ok?
@@ASUSTOR_YT Hey, you guys don't know what your talking about. It's not like you designed it or built and tested it in house before marketing it. I think Haim knows what he's about /s
@@blazinthat7439 I had no idea how to respond...
Great video. thanks!
I will definitely be rewatching this video a few more times as I am planning to make a Pi NAS myself.
I love the look of the Pi NAS case but wonder why you left the cables hanging out the back. If the case were a few inches deeper you could enclose the USB adapters, have a neater look and some protection for the connectors.
One thing that is worth considering in deciding between these two NAS is how much performance (drive speed) you really need. I currently back up to a single large USB3 drive using ChronoSync on a Mac. It does incremental backups (and many other things including scheduled backups) and so the time it takes to back up a video project that is in progress is minimal. Also if you use a utility that backups overnight performance is almost irrelevant as it is using downtime to sync.On the other hand if you are moving files on and off the NAS frequently then performance would be very important.
Thanks for the suggestion to extend the enclosure to cover the cables as well, this would definitely make the NAS look a lot neater.
Yes agreed, people get fixated on read and write speeds on a NAS without considering their actual use case. My video on the NAS on a Pi Zero is a good example of this, people are quick to point out the low data transfer speed but if you're using it for general office documents and even a few photos here and there then you probably won't even notice the speed.
You forgot to include the cost of the laser cutting machine for most of us in the world that don't own one. ;)
Perhaps costing in an off the shelf Pi Nas case would have been a better comparison and using only 2 drives in the ASUS. Plus using a 2.5Gbit Ethernet for the raspberry pi. Good video production but the comparisons were not really fair.
umm you know they have pi cases with SATA ports and such right? No need for USB
I did something similar using a mini-stx motherboard, i5-6400, 16gb ddr4 sodimm and 2x 3.5 10tb wd red hard drives. It has a male 3.5 in hd power (like a thin mini itx motherboard) that looks a lot cleaner cable wise.
Soooo....I need to add in the cost of a 3D printer if I'm going to build my own. For my situation the Drivestor is a better choice. Thank you for this video, I'm trying to get out of the Google/Microsoft/Dropbox cloud, and this looks like an ideal starter home cloud. Does the Drivestor software support a home cloud setup, or would I need to use a different software package? A video breaking this down would be very helpful. Subbed! (I like your presentation style.)
Wish you would sell the Pi case. It's beautiful!
Another great vid. I have a Pi NAS with only 500GB and had no problems with it. I found it more reliable than my WD My Cloud. I plan to build your version, an upgrade for me. Though the Asustor Drivestor 4 was a stronger performer, I believe for the average person, the DIY version is more bang for your buck. Great work on the case as well.
Thank you Greg, yes if you've got the time and a bit of experience then the Pi NAS is a great option to save some money.
Good video but you cant compare a RAID 5 performance with a Single drive.
The PI its limited by its HW and OS sadly but its a very good way to start a NAS at home
Yes you can build your own if what you are after is a traditional NAS and you will be end up with better hardware (more ram, better CPU) for cheaper. But what you won't be getting is the proprietary software that comes with the big NAS providers such as in the case of photo storage. Synology offers Photos, QNAP QuMaggie and Asustor Photo AI. All these systems also offer native mobile phone apps to give you a true Google photos replacement.
Now you can (sort of) get around this depending on your use case. Plex can run on just about anything, so can applications like Pihole, and you will find alternatives like Photoprism out there which are still very decent. Photoprism even has facial recognition.
I like the idea of using a professional NAS, but I don't like how these manufacturers seem to distribute the costs to include their OS and offerings so you end up with less than optimal hardware.
Yeah, the software is something often not factored in to the overall cost of proprietary systems. I'd probably rather pay for the software as part of the upfront hardware cost than have to pay for a software license or monthly subscription afterwards.
@@MichaelKlements Very true. It just causes some confusion initially when you're looking at systems like Synology where you're paying a premium for mediocre hardware compared to some of the mini PC's that can be bought in that price range, and you're not getting any disks with it. It comes across as almost a barebone system but kind of expensive. What's not obvious is that a lot of that premium cost for Synology is actually for purchase of the included software. That's all proprietary, solid, well researched and established. Native inhouse solutions that aren't running in emulation mode.
But on this point I have to remind myself we're talking about a NAS - literally a solution devised for storage. If anyone is buying these to actually run most of these services on offer, they would be better off just buying (or building) a dedicated server with all the bells and whistles. It would cost around the same and although more power hungry wouldn't struggle to run an array of services that weren't designed to run on a NAS.
I'm getting to that stage where I just want a solution that works with the least amount of hassle, without much tinkering or risk and it's a tossup between Synology or Qnap.
Cool and simple project, only one question... What if i wanted to 3d print the case? Did you make an STL file of the design? If not, can you please do it?
This case is laser cut from acrylic, so I don't have a 3D print design for it. I am working on a new Pi 5 NAS project which should be available in a couple of weeks which will be 3D printable.
@Michael Klements Do you have any suggestion for a cheap and reliable solution, like an enclosure for two 3.5" hard drives in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi?
In 2020, I was looking for a NAS but they were too expensive.. I so went the Pi way
My Pi NAS is a Pi 4 with 3 USB HDDs (WD_Black P10, they were the cheapest at the time) & OMV 6.
- two 4TB HDD 2.5" USB connected to the USB 3.0 ports (and external USB brick for more power)
- one 2TB HDD 2.5" USB connected to the USB 2.0 port
I setup rsync with the two 4TB, runs every night, that way I have a recent backup if something ever happens. I just need to replace the faulty drive and we are up an running again :)
Sequencial write speeds (a 8GB video file) averages around 100/110 MB/s (to both USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 HDD). Not bad for a budget NAS, HDD connected to my PC via USB 3.0 it's only 20/30 MB/s faster
If you've got the time to tinker with it and you're happy with slightly lower speeds then a Pi NAS is a pretty good option. OMV also has a really good set of features.
I made something extremely similar using a RockPro64, a 4 port SATA card, and 4 HDD's in RAID 1+0
i think that would be called a RAID 10
Bro is a magician, keeps pulling raspberry pi's out of a top hat. I haven't found one in stock in months.
Haha, the magic of video editing. That poor Pi has been a feature in number of videos already.
@@MichaelKlements once boards come back to normal you should put that one in a shadow box for remembrance.
Not sure when you purchased your raspberry pi, but the cost of any version is through the roof right now.
I got all of mine a couple of years back. I realise they're hard to come by at the moment, I just went with the list price.
A very interesting video. Please can you tell me what version of the Pi Operating System you used, all the tutorials I have seen on OMV use the "lite" version without the graphical desktop.
OMV only runs on the lite version of Raspberry Pi OS, that's what I've used as well.
The NAS looked like Ordroid CloudShell but Raspberry Pi
Hey Michael, are you South African?
Yes I am, I live in Australia now though
@@MichaelKlements Hah! Thought I recognized the accent, I'm also South African, though still in the homeland.
Love the channel man, gonna do a lil Pi NAS project in December based on your specs. Thanks for channel man.
Thanks for making this video, although I have followed the same steps with RPI3B+, but after installing the OMV , I am unable to connect with the WiFi network from my RPi, would please help me with that. Thanks again
OMV disables the WiFi network after installation, you need to force it on before rebooting. I talk about this in this video - ruclips.net/video/gyOHTZvhnxY/видео.html
Did you actually say that there shouldn't be any data loss with the pi as long as the drives remain good? The whole review seemed to be apples to oranges some it is raid vs non-raid.
Great video.
Although I know this may have been asked before and I've been looking all over the forums, but how are you able to get around 50MB/s or more during transfer on the RPi4 NAS? I just recently set mine up with the same structure but my transfer speeds are atrocious, something between 2-7MB/s. Any advice would be most appreciated
I didn't really do anything other than the basic OMV setup - this setup hasn't been optimised in any way.
Are you running the drives in the same configuration with no RAID? Perhaps it is a hardware limiation with the SATA to USB adapters that you're using? I've used some of these that have provided terrible transfer speeds.
In quarantine and my brain just burst ♀️
Where can I get cabinet?
RPi-bases NAS runs open source software which the Asustor probably doesn't. I also wonder if the Asustor comes with a shady EULA.
Yes one of the benefits of running a Pi as your NAS is the ability to use open source software.
Very interesting. Your raspberry 4B link to amazon suggested you paid 170-200 usd for your raspberry. I think i'll skip that one 😀
Fortunately mine is a couple of years old now
@@MichaelKlements then you are sitting on gold 😁 and your pension is taken care of.
Did you face any issues with UASP driver? Errors while writing to hard drives after some time?
Not with the adaptors that I used, they just worked out of the box. I only had the Pi NAS running for about a week, so I'm not sure long term, but didn't have any trouble in that time period.
Cool Video but that 4 bay unit you are reviewing cost as much as a Synology 920+……
The Drivestor 4 costs $290 and the Synology 920+ costs $550
As much as I like DIYing things. Just buy a NAS. Synology for me.
I use a Pi with RAID1 but it needs a powered USB HUB.
Does anyone have this case prebuilt / cut for purchase? I don't have a laser cutter to make it myself unfortunately.
Can I use Raspberry Pi NAS on other networks? ( On internet, while I am away from home ?)
You'll need to set up port forwarding on your router, but yes it is possible to access externally
if you put 2 drives in the asus - its makes it cheaper than the pi or am I missing something
The Pi based NAS without drives is $162 and the Asustor without drives is $290
im trying to do exactly this, but I cannot find a case that supports 3.5" drives and a pi... I found a janky drive rack I am currently planning to drill holes on the top for my pi... Not completely satisfied, but I can run a 140mm fan across everything. (I already have a spare noctua)
Have you been able to find something that works? Currently looking for the same thing. So far the best option seems to be this same style acrylic "test bench for 3.5 inch hdd" from ebay. Then just just mount the pi to it and done
@@minergate4066 I did!, but I ended up taking a different route for 3.5 Inch drives. I got an Odroid Hc4 which has native sata. I used that with a internal HDD cage with a built in fan mount. Then I modded a metal HDD 2.5 to 3.5" adapter to mount the odroid inside the cage. ... so now I have a 2x 3.5" drive nas on my network... For my raspberry pi, I got a single m.2 daughter board so now it boots from a 500gb m.2 and I use it for projects.
@@feralshad0w Oh interesting choice, seems like there's no easy way out if you want 3.5 inch hdd diy nas. Thanks for your feedback
@@minergate4066 No Problem. I was looking for something that was minimal cost but had the best performance. Not including the drives, i built the nas for about $100 and it performs really well. The pi4 and down options all revolved around a USB solution, but I don't think that is a good long term solution. The odroid Hc4 Also uses less power at idle which is very nice too.
Great video! The Asustor clearly wins for most applications which is not really a big surrprise. In your cost comparison you use $75 for the Pi which is probably unrealistic at this point but your overall analysis is right on the money. The lack of RAID on the Pi is a major disadvantage. I really love your cases btw. Wish I could afford a laser cutter. I just recently got my first Pi and I've really enjoyed your videos.
Luckily the Pi's I've got were all bought a couple of years ago, but yes, getting Pis at list price at the moment is pretty unusual.
Thank you for the support!
Take a look at some K40 laser cutter options online, you can often pick them up for $300-$400. It's a good starting machine and it's served me well for three years or so.
Was looking for such comparison
not understood whether to use Ironwolf or Ironwolf pro
Both work very well! We work closely with our hard drive partners to maintain performance and compatibility. Ironwolf Pros are somewhat faster and contain better warranties.
use an odroid hc4 with 2 native sata bay instead of raspberry. It's cheaper and more powerful...
You can get yourself a HP Gen8 microserver from the popular auction website and upgrade it to max configuration with a 45W 4 core, 8 thread Xeon and 16GB of memory for about the same price as the Asus NAS, its runs ZFS software RAID like a champ and it can be further expanded. Asus are going to need to up the specification a bit on the units to make them more useful, I'd like to see 8+ core CPU's and 16-32GB of memory, speaking personally, if I was going to buy that sort of thing.
I have a HP Gen8 microserver that I bought from Amazon years ago. I've upgraded the processor to a Xeon instead of the Pentium CPU that it came with. 7 years old and still running!
Yeah, I can't see buying a new one when something so capable can be found used so cheaply.
use an old macbook for built in ups and usb raid support :)
You can force USB RAID support on the Pi, it’s just not enabled/allowed by default
@@MichaelKlements no offence, so how is this comparison reasonable?
Which part don't you think is reasonable?
@@MichaelKlements comparing 4 drive raid to single-drive, when you can raid them, the whole point of a nas is to remove big noisy drives from your working area, otherwise you can just network-share a drive
Raid is one aspect of a NAS, people run a NAS for a range of reasons and I don't think the noise of the drives is very high up on the list of reasons why.
Asustor support can stopped in 3 years.. As it happend to my WD....
Assuming you can find a pi for msrp.
Really..? Seriously!? So the conclusion you come to is, that the Asus is faster due to the 2.5 Gigabit LAN?!? To be honest, i'm really, really astounded by the fact, that you didn't do a comparison *with both being connected to 1GB LAN!!* I mean.... how else would you compare those two devices that have this clear difference? For me at least, 1GB vs. 2.5GB LAN was NOT, what i was curious about.... it was *Pi vs. Asus with the same drives and same connection.* Am i the only one.....? Needless to say, that "most" (...) people won't have 2.5GB LAN in use at home yet... from the switch(es) to all kinds of devices - though getting a 2.5GB NAS could be a good starting point for that, sure.
جميل جدا
Raid 5 sucks IMHO you can use Raid 1+0 faster and safty.
$460 for an empty box. They are insane! DIY is far cheaper
Hi. The price of our Drivestor is $269.
Raspberry is overrated nowadays
lie breeze????
terrible pronounciation