NAS with OMV and Rasberry Pi 4

  • Hi Guys, I discovered OMV recently and am interested in building my own NAS drive using OMV and Rasberry Pi 4.


    I'm fairly new here so please excuse me for asking many questions but help from fellow members will be appreciated.




    I need a NAS solution for 2 reasons:



    1. A central storage for all my files that are organised and categorised for easy access (Books, magazines, Manuals, work files, Interesting Articles, Research papers). Family members need to access these files on their laptops (Macs), Phones (iOS and Android) and tablet (iOS).



    2. To store all my media files (Movies and Music). Movies to be accessed and played via Media Boxes: Nvidia Shield TV (2017) and a Xiaomi Mi Box 4S using KODI. I like KODI for it's reliable playback ability. Music will need to be played by a phone app that streams music to a pre-amp unit via non-lossy WiFi. Maybe the pre-amp receiver can be wired into the network switch.




    I have some questions and would appreciate input from fellow members:-



    1. Is running OMV on a Raspberry Pi 4 as powerful and effective as a Synology solution e.g. Synology DS218+ which is highly rated for home use ?



    2. The Pi 4 only has USB3 ports, are the connectors on the Pi 4 reliable enough to use a big primary USB3 drive (2 to 4 TB) ?



    3. At the moment I have 2 wired access points (802.11n routers acting as APs) plugged into a run-off-the mill cheap Chinese 5-port wireless router (802.11n) provided by my ISP. The 2 wired APs enabled a reliable WiFi signal everywhere in the house. I am looking into investing in a good but cost effective 8-port gigabit switch and two 802.11AC based wireless routers to replace by existing AP routers. I would then connect my ISP router, two APs and the OMV NAS drive into the Gigabit switch. Is this the right approach to maximise performance ?



    4. One of my APs is close to my entertainment room where I am using an NVIDIA Shield TV unit that is 802.11AC compliant. I am trying to avoid hard-wiring the Shield TV unit into the network as that would involve too much work and would be expensive (running new conduits). Hence, is 802.11AC fast enough to stream 1080p/60 surround-sound encoded movies and 4K/60 surround-sound encoded movies ?



    5. Eventually, I want to create 1:1 copies of all my movies, the file sizes will be huge but I don't want any compromise. The Nvidia Shield TV can handle video playback (2k or 4K) very well but I don't want stuttering problems when streaming via wireless. Has anyone tried this ?



    6. I have a small TV in my living room attached to a Xiaomi Mi Box 4 (Android TV Box) - I believe this media box is capable of transcoding content so there would be no need for the OMV solution to have transcoding capability. It just needs to serve files reliably and quickly which OMV is designed for right ?



    7. Would it be possible to back-up the primary USB3 drive manually every week during the night when the NAS is not being used ?



    8. Would I be able to access the documents on my OMV based NAS when I am not at home ?



    9. A question for future initiatives - If I am building a website or a blog, would I be able to host it on the OMV NAS system for testing purposes ?

    • Offizieller Beitrag
    • Yes. But OMV and RPi4 is a Do-It-Yourself solution. How good it becomes primarily depends on you. Your skills, knowledge, willingness to learn and patience. A Synology NAS would save you a lot of time and effort.
    • Yes. Provided you use a good external disk with good power supply. Western Digital and Seagate backup or desktop external drives might be problematic when used for a NAS. I use 2x8TB in a dual drive enclosure with my OMV4 RPi4 install. Startech.
    • Yes.
    • Yes. Usually. But perhaps not if the media is encoded with a very high bitrate. I stream 4k over my WiFi network fine. But if there are several very high bitrate streams simultaneously there might be problems.
    • By 1:1 I assume you mean uncompressed 4K video? That would indeed result in really, really huge file sizes. It will not work over WiFi. I don't think it would even work over Gigabit Ethernet. However, unless you are a media producer I doubt you have access to uncompressed video?
    • OMV itself don't stream media. OMV can share the media files over the network, accessible to play by TV.s or other media players in the network. Or you can install media streaming software, like Plex or Emby, on OMV to provide media streaming.
    • Yes. Or have OMV do it automatically. That is what I do. Perhaps to another OMV NAS or to another HDD connected to the same NAS. But you will have to set it up. OMV is a DIY solution, remember?
    • Not "out of the box". You will need to configure VPN and other stuff. Not easy for a beginner, but certainly possible. DIY, remember? If you don't know how to do it it is impossible, If you know how to do it it is easy.
    • Yes. Preferably using a web server and database server and so on installed as a Docker.

    OMV is based on Debian. Debian is a Linux distribution. Linux is a great server platform. Internet is largely running on Linux. So you can use OMV to do almost anything. However the RPi4 will limit the possibilities some.

  • Hi Adoby, thank you so much for your response and help, you sound like a serious techie. I've been reading some of your posts. Another guy that seems to know his stuff is tkaiser.




    1. I kind of like that it is DIY, all the more fun. I can start-off by following the initial set-up videos and work my way up. Feel free to point me in the right direction.


    2. Give me an example of a good external drive with a good power supply. I would not mind a bigger box that accommodates both the Pi4 card and the single main drive in one enclosure - is that possible ?


    3. Thanks


    4. Do you stream 4K over your WiFi with full surround sound encoding ?


    5. By 1:1 I mean copying all my 2k and 4k original blueray movies into digital format without any compromise to video or surround sound. Non-lossy compression would be OK in a format like MKV. I use KODI to play back the movies and it hands over everything to an AV processor for decoding so no internal transcoding required.


    6. That is all I need, for OMV to share media files so that they can be accessed from media players reliably (Nvidia Shield TV and Xiaomi Mi 4S).


    7. I'd use another HDD connected to the same NAS for backups. The auto ability sounds good.


    8. I guess I can always figure it out eventually.


    9. I will look into Docker - is it an OS ?



    What would you recommend other than the Pi4 ?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Here are two USB 3 enclosures I have good personal experience with using for OMV and RPi4:


    Dual 3.5" with a 12 volt power supply. I use it for backups with two 8TB drives in mergerfs:
    https://www.startech.com/HDD/E…a-iii-usb-uasp~S352BU33HR


    Single 2.5" without power. 7 mm max. I use it with a Crucial MX500 2TB SATA SSD.
    https://www.startech.com/HDD/E…2-5-inch-SATA~S2510BPU337


    Some of the 4K streams are indeed 5.1 DTS. I stream everything as is and have my clients decode/scale it.


    You can very simply estimate the network capacity needed for a given file, if you stream as is without trans-coding. Simple arithmetic.


    Take the size in megabytes and divide it by the duration in seconds. Then you get a rough estimate of MBps needed to stream it. Multiply with 8 to get Mbps. Multiply with 2 to add ample safety margins. Multiply with the number of simultaneous streams you need. And you get network capacity needed in megabits per second. Mbps.


    For instance a 10 GB big 4K film running 2 hours. Only one stream in the network.


    (b=bit, B=byte)


    10 GB = 10 000 MB.
    2 hours = 2 x 60 x 60 = 7 200 seconds.
    10 000 / 7 200 = 1.39 MBps


    Convert to Mbps: 1.39 * 8 = 11.2 Mbps.
    Add 100% safety margin: 22.4 Mbps.


    22.4 Mbps should be no problem at all for a good WiFi setup. 2.8 MBps.


    Simply plugin your file sizes and durations to make your own estimates. And get a WiFi setup that can handle it. i have an 5GHz Asus WiFi mesh with three nodes. With a cable to a mesh node I get up to 60MBps. Pure WiFi and free sight and near, up to 30MBps. Perhaps half that through a wall or a floor.


    If you re-encode/transcode and then stream, you should simply calculate the new total re-encoded bitrate.


    Docker is a way to run apps in OMV in containers. Almost like virtual machines, but less resource demanding.


    https://opensource.com/resources/what-docker


    The 4GB RPi4 is a very nice base for a small NAS. Or not so small... But it seems many encounter problems with USB attached drives and using it with drives formatted for use with Windows. But it works fine for me. I don't have any Windows clients at all in my network...


    I mainly use Odroid HC2s with SATA connected drive. But the HC2 is a bit old and only 32 bit. But my HC2 are still going strong and are easily saturating my GbE network and have no problem running Emby for network streaming. However for many users I wouldn't recommend either HC2 or RPi4. Then a "real" x86 server would be better.

  • Thanks Adoby, you have provided very useful information. Some questions:-


    1. We are an Apple oriented household and don't have windows machines. However, the USB issue concerns me. Is it possible to buy an extension (HAT I think) to link another card that holds a sata drive ?


    2. Is is better to spend a little more and a better circuit board ? - Do you know of any that are really good ? Give us an example of a real X86 server please.


    3. I would only stream to one device at a time with my entertainment room being the place where I want no compromise. I have the option of linking a big USB Drive directly to my Nvidia Shield TV and managing all my 1:1 movies using KODI. I really like this system and the way it works: https://www.kaleidescape.com - However, it is really expensive and I'm of the opinion that it is possible to do something similar with KODI immediately. Eventually, when I incorporate a super-fast wired network, I can think of Emby or Plex.


    4. Once I have a NAS in place, is it possible to access files on any device: Smart phones, tablets and computers ?


    Have you seen Kaleidescape in action ? - do you think a similar interface and functionality could be built via a DIY project ?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Hopefully someone else with personal experience can give examples. You can find several threads here where people describe their hardware. But I really think the RPi4 is a good start. Get a good cooling case and a good SD card and some nice USB drive.


    Backups are often overlooked. If you do go the RPi4 / USB route, a dual bay external USB enclosure could be nice. Then one HDD could be used for shared data and the other for backups.


    Or, if you try with a RPi4, and later upgrade to a bigger x86 server, you can use the RPi4 for backups of the x86 system.


    So I would recommend you to start small to get some experience. If you decide to upgrade the small starter NAS will be great for backups. If you get two big HDDs, one for shares and one for backups, you can easily reuse one or both in a bigger x86 NAS.


    A RPi4 has no problems with huge HDDs. For instance 16TB Exos drives. So even if you start small with a RPi4, you can go big on the HDDs from the start. It is often new big HDDs that is the major cost for a NAS...


    I use Emby with lifetime Premium. Works fine. It has some very nice cinema-like features, but I rarely use them. I mostly stream movies to an Android tablet. But I have installed Emby for Android on an Android smart TV. Works fine. As do Kodi.


    I stream 4K content from Emby over WiFi without any problems. If you use a RPi4 you can't re-encode on-the-fly. You have to stream the media as-is. And have the clients decode and scale as needed.


    You should be able to access shares on the NAS from any client. I only use Android and Linux clients. I use NFS for Linux and SMB for Android. And the Emby app for Android. Expect to experiment a bit before you get things working correctly.

  • Thank you very much indeed Adoby for all your useful input and advice.


    I think I'll follow your advice and start-off with RPi4, fan, suitable enclosure and a USB3 hard drive.


    For heavy-duty AV I will resort to a USB3 drive connected directly to my Nvidia Shield TV.

    • Offizieller Beitrag
    • There is a SATA hat available for the pi 4. I don’t have a pi4 but I do have a NanoPi M4 with a SATA hat and it works just fine.

    I use Macs/iDevices with my network and it works fine with SMB shares. Roku is better than AppleTV (for Plex) with my setup.


    @Adoby has the scoop on powered enclosures. Follow his advice on enclosures. He’s an Emby guy - I use Plex and love it. I’m sure they are both on a par.

    • There is a SATA hat available for the pi 4. I don’t have a pi4 but I do have a NanoPi M4 with a SATA hat and it works just fine.

    I use Macs/iDevices with my network and it works fine with SMB shares. Roku is better than AppleTV (for Plex) with my setup.


    @Adoby has the scoop on powered enclosures. Follow his advice on enclosures. He’s an Emby guy - I use Plex and love it. I’m sure they are both on a par.

    Hi Agricola, thank you very much for that useful piece of information, I appreciate it.


    I think I'll start off with a Pi4 and a SATA hat. Have you had any bad experiences with USB3 ?


    So with SMB shares, the NAS or Folders on the NAS show up on the Mac/iDevices ?

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Hi Agricola, thank you very much for that useful piece of information, I appreciate it.
    I think I'll start off with a Pi4 and a SATA hat. Have you had any bad experiences with USB3 ?


    So with SMB shares, the NAS or Folders on the NAS show up on the Mac/iDevices ?

    All of my disks are connected to SATA on my M4. I always have a backup connected to my hc2’s but it is only usb2, so I can’t shed any light on usb3, just that I’ve seen a fair bit on the forum of folks having problems with usb3. What I have read about the pi4 seems to indicate those problems have been addressed. I have not heard of anyone on this forum complaining about the pi4. I’m curious to see how the SATA hat performs with it.


    SMB works fine for me on a MacOS (plus one Ubuntu) network. Nothing to do from the client side besides logging in.

  • All of my disks are connected to SATA on my M4. I always have a backup connected to my hc2’s but it is only usb2, so I can’t shed any light on usb3, just that I’ve seen a fair bit on the forum of folks having problems with usb3. What I have read about the pi4 seems to indicate those problems have been addressed. I have not heard of anyone on this forum complaining about the pi4. I’m curious to see how the SATA hat performs with it.
    SMB works fine for me on a MacOS (plus one Ubuntu) network. Nothing to do from the client side besides logging in.

    Thank you very much indeed for your input, that gives me a little more confidence in regards to USB3. Is SATA generally more reliable than USB3 ? - I can get a SATA HAT for the main drive and a USB3 drive for backup. I would prefer to manually back-up the drive every 2 weeks or so and not have it permanently attached to the NAS.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    Yes, SATA is more reliable than USB. It seems there are too many things that can go wrong with USB. Power, cables, USB hubs, NTFS, drive settings and OS incompabilities. But if you manage to avoid the pitfalls, it works fine. I have no problem using my OMV RPi4 with USB drives.


    For temporary connections, like backups, USB is very nice.

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    What @Adoby said :thumbup: .


    If you buy a SATA hat I think it comes in a two-port and four port model for the pi4. Make sure it is intended for the Raspberry Pi4.

  • Yes, SATA is more reliable than USB. It seems there are too many things that can go wrong with USB. Power, cables, USB hubs, NTFS, drive settings and OS incompabilities. But if you manage to avoid the pitfalls, it works fine. I have no problem using my OMV RPi4 with USB drives.


    For temporary connections, like backups, USB is very nice.

    Could I ask you if OMV5 will allow to set a RAID1 on two hard disks (3.5" 4 tb each) connected to RPI4 usb3 ports by a usb-sata adapter? I will power them indipentently. Thank you in advance :)

    • Offizieller Beitrag

    No. OMV does not support RAID using USB connected drives. Monsters live there.


    But you could use a dual bay USB enclosure that supports RAID1. The dual bay enclosure I linked above supports RAID1. (I haven't tested it.) I use it as JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) with mergerfs. (One big filesystem made from two smaller.)


    However I suspect that you would be much better off NOT using RAID1 but instead using two HDDs with one dedicated to frequent rsync snapshot backups of the other. A dual bay enclosure would work fine for that as well. As would separate drives or even separate NAS.


    With RAID1, if you delete a file or it becomes corrupt, it is gone. Gone from both HDDs in the RAID1 array at once. Poof!


    With frequent rsync snapshot backups you can have a version saved of the file as it was a couple of hours ago, yesterday, the day before, last week and whatever. I typically keep one version per day for a week, one version per week for a month and one version per month for a year.

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