NanoNAS NanoPi M4 3-bay or 4-bay most compact and low consumption RAID

I wanted to share my build with you guys.

It´s a 3D printed case which cleans the setup and gives a little bit more safety to the drives and nanopi m4 board.

find more information on my website www.scheisser.net

and the model files at thingiverse.com

while drives sleep it consumes around 7W and under heavy load max up to 20W

If you have questions feel free to ask... or check above links

PS: sorry for the tape it covers broken parts which happenend while cleaning the prototype cover from supports. (was a quick and dirty print to proof the concept but works)

Yes and No, it´s a fun project but for productive use. I had for long time a single bay synology but since the drive died a few years ago I didn´t use it anymore for storing files on long term as everything was in the nirvana at that time. I looked into a 3-bay or more NAS with redundancy and realized that it starts at a high price point and entry level NAS are restricted to a manufacturer and their support in terms of firmwares or OS builds. On the other hand you can get nowadays good and convenient solutions but these are mostly based on x86 which consume a lot of energy.

So this year the nanopi M4 with the sata hat came out and I wanted to give it a try. I only realized one pain point and this is the missing case hosting the nanopi + extention board and the drives.

I also looked for a low consumption NAS so I decided to go with this setup and OMV4.

I want to support this setup and especially the OMV + nanopi M4 by adding herewith the design for a simple and easy to build case.

There´s no challenge...the OMV image is available for the nanopi M4 as well as the aditional modules and drives and now finally I´ll provide a compact case to host everything safely. That´s it.

measures of the case are 134*129*89mm

find attached photos of the setup with a new top cover I printed today...

attached a video about dismantling the case and all of the components...

Just thinking about extending the case to a 4-bay device. Yes, I only use 3 drives at the moment but a 4-bay version makes sense to use the max out of the SBC + the SATA hat. Would be happy for feedback from you on this topic.

Hi Macom,

Until today the setup is working like a charm. The device is most of the time in idle and the drives are not spinning. I last week made a big transfer of files with 3 TB to it and it took a few hours. After around 5 hours under full load one drive reached 40°C but the others are 38°C and 39°C. all in all the drives stay in a similar temperature range of max 2-3°C difference.

I designed the air inlets and the fan position for the best airflow inside the case. The device is quite small so the air has to pass the drives then goes up to the Nanopi and cools mostly the SATA controller (as this is getting really hot). The Nanopi itself is passive cooled by the big heatsink I purchased with it. So in the end the temperature stays really stable.

I realized that one additional inlet of fresh air to the lower HDD will add more continuity to the temperatures. Let´s see if I can find time to add minor changes to the design. Meanwhile you are good to go with the actual model files...

below a screenshot after a few hours of writing files...

No its really calm thanks to the 0.08A slow spinning fan. It is located in my living room but I will not recognize it. I tested around with a 0.12A fan and this was too noisy for me. But in case the nas is located on a place where you don´t care for a fan noise you can choose yourself which fan you want to use as long it has the same measurements...

I´m quite busy at the moment but I try to free up some time to work on the 4-bay version...

two beers and 2 hours work done on modelling the 4-bay version. The overall height will increase for 21mm but now the case can host 4 2,5" drives and get used of all SATA ports of the SATA hat...

My lady is not really happy but still accepting it
Please provide feedback if you print it out as I don´t have the time for getting it printed for a proof... THANKS a lot!

all files are accessible at the known sources mentioned in post #1 of this thread.

The first guy who´s asking for a 5-bay version will get a beer for free in my hometown Bamberg - Germany...

for my luck my wife doesn´t complain that I´m sitting every evening these days at my computer...

about the fan: I have two different fans. one is a 12VDC 0.08A which is really quiet and a 12VDC with 0.2A which pulls really much air but this one isn´t acceptable for a living room. To reduce speed resistors work but this is not really efficient as the resistor only "burns" energy into heat.

for the beers: Mahr´s is really good but my local dealer does not have the Mahr Hell in his portfolio... Due to the lot´s of Bockbeer festivals these days I prefer having a light tasting beer at home so I took the Reckendorfer Hell

btw: I can´t remember that I tried Nankendorfer before...

As I got the question on another channel the FriendlyArm NanoPi M4V2 should be fully compatible for this setup. The Formfactor didn´t change. On their Website I found following changelog description

https://www.friendlyarm.com/in…ct/product&product_id=268

So you are good to go with the newer version but it would be helpful if you share your experience in case you have cloned this setup with the new nanopi M4V2. Thanks...

The whole case is designed for 2.5" drives... That´s why it is really small and really low on energy consumption. Regarding the formfactor this is one of the most compact and tiny NAS setup you can get at the moment...

My setup hosts at the moment three of Seagates ST4000LM024 2,5" with each 4TB which results in 7,68TB usable space in an RAID5 array. But the new 4-bay version can host one drive more...

https://www.seagate.com/intern…/hdd/barracuda/#specs-2-5

@Morlan, yep you are right

thanks for pointing out. corrected it

I monitored the consumption for the last few days. consumption is really only a little bit above 7W but this is due to the fact that it was active for 2 or 3 hours... idle with sleeping drives is below 7w