Pi as NAS Media server (confirmation)

[Valleyboy44]

Hi,

I have done much research but wanted the lovely people of this forum to confirm a few points .

I want to purchase the latest Raspberry Pi + external self powered USB drive.

I want to then copy all my films and music onto the hard drive.

This will hopefully then enable my wife to connect via the HiSense TV In the bedroom over our internal network (all items connect by cat5 via TPLink) to the Pi and watch films.

Questions/confirmation please-(some obvious I know)

1- The Pi can have an external HD (or the dedicated WD drive) connected to one of it's usb ports. And with a suitable case I can combine the two items.

2- From basic research I can then install Plex (please suggest better) on the Pi and after some 'messing about' my wife should be able to via the upstairs TV's network cpnmect to Plex on the Pi.,browse and watch a film?

3- I am worried about having the Pi powered on during the day when nobody is there. I have read many posts this will not be a problem as the latest Pi doesn't need heatsync or fan?

4- Is there a dedicated NAS/MEDIA SERVER piece of software/app/image I could use to save initial hassle.

Sorry for the long post and thank you for any help. I can't afford a dedicated system like Synology etc and to be fair this is much more fun.

Cheers

[Andyroo]

You may struggle to get a case to hold both the Pi and a HDD or even SSD - I have an old WD case they made for this but it needs a 90 degree USB cable! It may be better to find a powered disk enclosure for two drives but put the Pi in one and a HD in the other!

I do not use Plex so I’m a bit stuck there but others should be able to help.

You can get both heatsinks and fans for the Pi - do not connect the fan direct to the GPIO though (not good for the Pi) - my 3B in the WD case just has a heat sink set on it and does not get warm but it’s not heavily taxed. The Pi will slows down if too warm.

You can get HATs that will add a real-time clock and automatic power control - fine till the holidays and you want something mid day!

Remember to make a backup of the disk - they do fail and you do not want to loose all the films.

As for “and to be fair this is much more fun“ - you are stuffed unless you deliver the films first - welcome to this little addiction of ours!

[PhatFil]

I agree the case is probably the hardest of your asks to satisfy. but do-able im sure and fwiw with the use of a hub you should be able to add upto 6x usb disks to your pi nas..

[default_user8]

Yes that will work just fine, i do the same at my house just with samsung tv's since samsung smart tv's have a plex app. Although, there are other options out there, one of which would require you to purchase 2 raspi's or more to the point one raspi as a server, and then one for each tv that you want to access the server. This option would be to use Kodi on the client end, which seems to just work where as plex requires a little more work IMO. I find that plex is finicky in regards to the format of video's and in my experience plex seems to like the avi format the most. So, if you don't mind converting all your video that won't be and issue. I will add some links for your to check out if you want to do more research. Good luck with your project it's a fun learning experience.

https://medium.com/@nem25/plex-media-se ... ace75f2b1d

https://libreelec.tv/

[LTolledo]

I have an RPi based NAS. For your reference the specs are as follows:

• Raspberry Pi 2B v1.2
  Laminated Acrylic Case with fan. Fan takes power from microUSB port (not from GPIO headers)
  14x14x9 copper heatsink on SoC, 9x9x14 heatsink on LAN chip, 14x14x6 heatsink on memory chip
  5v 3 2.4A PSU
  LAN connection via USB Gigabit Ethernet (add-on)
  Native USB boot from Sandisk 16GB thumbdrive (no microSD inserted in microSD slot)
  Self powered USB 2.0 Hub (connected to RPi USB port)
  2.5" 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD in Orico SATA to USB 3.0 case (connected to USB hub)
  2.5" 1TB Seagate Barracuda HDD in Orico SATA to USB 3.0 case (connected to USB hub)
  Raspbian Stretch with Desktop
  NTFS formatted HDDs are shared thru the network via samba.

by changing the LAN connection from Fast Ethernet to Gigabit Ethernet, 50% increase in file transfer speed was realized (YMMV)
the system is in a covered shelf, but might might enclose it in a used mini ATX pc case later.

For a single HDD/SSD system:

• Raspberry Pi 3 Model B+
  20x20x6 Heatsink on SOC and 9x9x14 heatsink on LAN chip, 14x14x2 heatsink on memory
  5v 3.0A PSU
  Ethernet LAN connection
  16GB A1 Samsung microSD
  2.5" 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD connected via Inateck UA1003 SATA to USB3.0 cable.
  Raspbian Stretch with Desktop
  NTFS formatted HDD shared thru the network via samba
  Quattro Case (modified to install a 20x20x10 5v fan, better air flow)
  Fan gets power from microUSB port
  40C max temp at ambient 34C.

both systems are running headless and managed via RealVNC and/or SSH.
main usage of the RPi-NAS is to store and share movie and music files, to be accessed by mainly by Kodi on another RPi (from ZeroW to 3B+)
Access to RPi-NAS by a Sony smartTV was also confirmed.