I've seen some info about the Raspberry Pi in a marketing email from a seller, and I noticed it it is significantly faster than the computer that is my server. I currently have a VIA integrated mini ITX system running linux mint as a local network samba file server. spec: 1ghz single core CPU, 1ghz RAM, Watt PSU Will a Raspberry Pi work to upgrade the system? or any other suitable system? what grabbed my attention, is the low power, and significantly upgraded computing power. even a low end android smartphone is more powerful than my server.
Can you build a NAS using a pi? - Yes, using OpenMediaVault or similar iirc. Is it any good? - No idea Is it better than what you currently have? - Also no idea.
It depends, remember that rPi does not have sata, so you'll need sata->USB converters for storage, if you are using 3.5" hdds then you'll prob need a separate PSU. The SOC has a single USB2 bus, witch it also used for Ethernet, so best case transfer speed would be ~20MB/s (for B3+, 12MB/s for previous versions). 1-2 bay NAS start ~£100, that will be on par or even cheaper than getting rPi + uSD, converters, PSUs, enclosures, etc.
Sadly, lower: the single USB 2.0 lane is shared betwix the Ethernet port *and* the physical USB ports, which means that while you can get 220Mb/s-ish through the 3B+'s 'gigabit' port when shuffling data to /dev/null, you'll only get half that when writing it to or reading it from a hard drive connected via USB. You may actually find it faster, in fact, to connect via the on-board Wi-Fi, 'cos that doesn't use the USB lane.
I have a DS115j you can have for £50 delivered. I dont know much about speeds and stuff or even if its a viable option for you ...
I tried this once, the bandwidth through the ethernet was a killer. I've since gone Microserver, which I would always recommend if you have the cupboard space.
I've got an RPi 1B rev2 (512MB RAM) running OSMC with a hard drive hooked to it and network through ethernet (remember, these didn't have Wi-Fi). Best I can manage through SFTP or Samba is 3MB/s, best on NFS is a bit closer to 5. I still use it though, I can't bring myself to replace it. It hasn't skipped a heartbeat since RaspBMC days (precursor to OSMC), running at 1GHz without voiding warranty (Kodi just keeps the CPU fully wound). Maybe the new one will be better than your current set up, especially over Wi-Fi. You're still stuck with a hard drive through USB 2.0 though. Are there any little boards with gigabit ethernet, usb 3.x that don't cost an arm and a leg?
Odroid-XU4 probably is the most affordable one if you need USB3. Anything else if you can live with USB2 (pretty much all SBC on the market today have Gigabit ethernet, except RPi of course).
You can get a SATA daughterboard for the RPi but it’s all about port density. You might be able to make a single drive NAS with it but that’s it. You’d be better buying a secondhand Synology or even a HP Microserver with the E3-1220L chip in it which is 17w.
Ahem: The Pi 3 Model B+ has gigabit Ethernet. Limited to about 220Mb/s best-case throughput, but it's a gigabit connection...
Just to follow this up, I've actually done exactly this to replace CrashPlan as my off-site backup. Raspberry Pi Model 3B+ (overkill, but why not?) and a 1TB WD Labs PiDrive. The initial sync of 450-ish gig took a while, but it's happy as Larry now: Stuck a reverse SSH tunnel on it, too, so that I can SSH into it wherever in the world it ends up, even behind multiple firewalls. If it can get out to the 'net, I can get in to it - even if I don't know its IP address. Shiny!
I've been running a Celeron J1900 for ~3 years now as my always on server and it's been rock solid. Run's Hyper-V with a SMB share for media (bodged in via powershell) and a FreePBX guest to run my phone system. It draws ~ 35W from the wall at normal load, but I suspect the old power supply I'm using isn't very efficient at such a low load, so it could be improved.
