Stop overthinking your home storage. Seriously. Most people go out and drop $600 on a Synology rig or repurpose a power-hungry 2015 gaming tower to hold their photos and movies. It’s too much. It’s loud. And frankly, it’s a waste of electricity.
If you want a Raspberry Pi NAS (Network Attached Storage), you’re basically looking for a way to stop paying for Google Photos or iCloud while keeping your data under your own roof. It’s the ultimate "set it and forget it" project for anyone who’s tired of monthly subscriptions. But there’s a lot of bad advice out there about how to actually do it right. People will tell you to just plug a USB stick into a Pi 3 and call it a day.
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Don't do that. You'll lose your data.
The Hardware Reality Check
Let's talk about the Raspberry Pi 5. It changed the game because of the PCIe lane. Earlier models, like the Pi 4, were great, but they shared bandwidth across the USB bus, which could get bottlenecked if you were pushing heavy 4K video files around your house. The Pi 5 allows for actual NVMe SSD support via HATs (Hardware Attached on Top).
If you’re building a Raspberry Pi NAS today, you need to decide if you’re going "janky" or "pro." Janky is a Pi 4 with a couple of external WD My Passport drives hanging off it like tentacles. It works! I’ve run one for three years without a hiccup. But if you want something that looks like a real appliance, you go for something like the Argon EON or a Geekworm NASPi CM4 kit. These enclosures turn the tiny board into a sleek, multi-bay toaster that holds full-sized 3.5-inch hard drives.
Why does this matter?
Because 3.5-inch SATA drives are where the value is. You can grab a 14TB Seagate IronWolf or a Western Digital Red Pro and have enough space for literally every movie you've ever seen. Putting that much storage on a credit-card-sized computer feels like a superpower.
OpenMediaVault vs. TrueNAS vs. CasaOS
Software is where most people get stuck. You've got options, but they aren't all equal.
OpenMediaVault (OMV) is the old reliable. It’s built on Debian, which is what Raspberry Pi OS is based on. It’s lightweight. It doesn't care if you're running a weak CPU. The interface is a bit "Windows 95," but it gets the job done.
Then there’s CasaOS. Honestly? It’s beautiful. If you’re scared of terminal windows and command lines, CasaOS is your best friend. It gives you a "one-click" dashboard that looks like an iPad home screen. You click an icon, and Plex is installed. You click another, and you have a private Dropbox replacement called Nextcloud.
- OpenMediaVault: For the person who wants to tweak every permission and RAID setting.
- CasaOS: For the person who just wants it to work in five minutes.
- Umbrel: Great if you’re into Bitcoin nodes or self-hosting, but it can be a bit heavy for a simple file server.
The Bottleneck Nobody Mentions: Power
I’ve seen so many "my Pi keeps crashing" threads on Reddit. 90% of the time, it’s the power supply. A Raspberry Pi NAS with two spinning hard drives attached via USB pulls way more juice than a standard phone charger can provide. You need the official Raspberry Pi 27W USB-C Power Supply, especially for the Pi 5.
If your drives start clicking? That’s not a broken drive. That’s a drive starving for electricity.
If you're using 3.5-inch drives, they must have their own external power source. The Pi simply cannot spin those heavy platters through its USB ports. This is a physical limitation. Ignore it, and you'll corrupt your filesystem.
RAID is Not a Backup
This is the hill I will die on. Just because you have two drives mirrored (RAID 1) in your Raspberry Pi NAS doesn't mean your data is safe. RAID protects you from a hardware failure. It does not protect you from:
- Fire.
- Lightning strikes.
- You accidentally hitting "Delete" on your wedding photos.
- Ransomware.
If you delete a file on a mirrored NAS, it's deleted on both drives instantly. Poof. Gone. You still need an offsite backup. I usually recommend a simple script that rsyncs the Pi's data to an encrypted S3 bucket or a friend's house once a week.
Real World Performance: What to Expect
Let's be real about speeds. You aren't getting 10Gbps enterprise speeds here. The Raspberry Pi has a Gigabit Ethernet port. In the real world, that means you’ll see transfer speeds around 100-115 MB/s.
That’s fast enough to stream 4K Blu-ray rips to three different TVs in your house simultaneously. It’s fast enough for daily backups of your laptop. It is not fast enough to edit 8K video directly off the server. Know your limits.
Why not just buy a Synology?
Synology is great. I love their software. But a 2-bay Synology DS224+ will run you about $300 before you even buy the hard drives. A Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB), a power supply, an SD card, and a basic SATA-to-USB adapter will cost you maybe $120.
You're paying for the experience. If you like building things, the Pi is a joy. If you want to click "Buy Now" and never think about it again, buy the Synology. But you’ll miss out on the learning experience of Linux, Docker, and networking.
Step-by-Step Strategy for Your First Build
Don't overcomplicate this.
First, get your Pi. If you can't find a Pi 5, a Pi 4 with 4GB of RAM is perfectly fine. Don't bother with the 1GB or 2GB versions if you plan on running Plex; the metadata alone will eat that RAM for breakfast.
Second, get a high-quality microSD card—look for "Endurance" cards. They handle the constant logs that a NAS writes better than cheap cards. Even better? Boot your Pi from a small NVMe SSD. It makes the UI feel infinitely snappier.
Third, install Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit). You don't need a desktop environment. You won't have a monitor plugged into this thing anyway. It’s a "headless" server. You’ll manage it all through your web browser from your "real" computer.
Once you have the OS up, run the install script for CasaOS. It’s a single line of code you copy-paste from their website. Suddenly, your Pi has a brain. You can see your CPU temp, your storage space, and a list of apps you can install.
Critical Apps to Install Immediately:
- Plex or Jellyfin: For your movies and TV shows. Jellyfin is totally free; Plex has a paid "Pass" for some features.
- Nextcloud: This is your private Google Drive. It has a phone app that automatically uploads your photos to your Pi whenever you're on Wi-Fi.
- Transmission or qBittorrent: For "acquiring" Linux ISOs and other files.
- Pi-hole: Since the server is always on anyway, why not have it block ads for every device in your house?
The "Screeching Halt" Problems
There are a few things that will ruin your day. First: Heat.
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A Pi acting as a NAS is working hard. If it’s stuffed in a closet with no airflow, it will throttle. Get a case with a fan, or at least a massive passive heatsink like the FLIRC case.
Second: Cheap cables. Not all USB-SATA adapters are the same. Look for ones that support UASP (USB Attached SCSI Protocol). It’s a mouthful, but it basically allows for much faster data transfers over USB 3.0. Without UASP, your "Gigabit" NAS will feel like a snail.
Third: Formatting your drives. If you’re coming from Windows, you might want to use NTFS. Don't. Linux (and the Pi) works best with ext4 or BTRFS. If you use NTFS, the Pi's CPU has to work extra hard just to read the files, which slows everything down and creates heat. Start fresh, format to ext4, and you'll be much happier.
Is it worth it in 2026?
With the rise of "mini PCs" (those little N100 Intel boxes), some people say the Raspberry Pi is dead for NAS use. They have a point. An Intel N100 box is faster and often comes with a case and power supply for $150.
But the Pi still wins on three fronts: community, power draw, and GPIO.
The community for Raspberry Pi NAS projects is massive. If you have a problem, someone solved it on a forum four years ago. The power draw is also incredibly low—we're talking $5 to $10 of electricity per year. And the GPIO pins let you do cool stuff, like adding a tiny OLED screen to the front of your case that shows your IP address and disk usage. Try doing that with a generic mini PC.
Your Move
If you've got a drawer full of old hard drives and a weekend to kill, there is no reason not to do this.
Start by picking up a Raspberry Pi 5 and the official power supply. Don't buy a "kit" that includes 20 tiny sensors you'll never use. Just get the board, the power, and a good case.
Download the Raspberry Pi Imager tool on your laptop. Choose "Raspberry Pi OS Lite" and hit "Write." Once that's done, you're 90% of the way to firing up your own private cloud.
Once you get CasaOS or OpenMediaVault running, move your most important files there first. Test the transfer speeds. See how it feels to access a document from your phone while you're sitting at a coffee shop (you'll need Tailscale for that—look it up, it's a lifesaver for secure remote access).
Once you realize you don't need to pay $2.99 a month to a tech giant just to store your own data, you'll never go back.
Actionable Next Steps:
- Audit your storage: Figure out how many terabytes you actually need. Don't overbuy; drives get cheaper every year.
- Check your router: Ensure you have an open Gigabit Ethernet port near where you want the NAS to live. Wi-Fi is okay for a Pi, but for a NAS, it's a bottleneck you don't want.
- Order the right power: Ensure it's the 5V/5A (27W) supply if you're using the Pi 5 to avoid "undervoltage" warnings that will plague your logs.
- Flash the OS: Use the Raspberry Pi Imager to set up your SSH credentials before you even plug the Pi in. This makes the "headless" setup effortless.