The ULTIMATE Raspberry Pi 5 NAS

Radxa's Penta SATA HAT fits nicely atop the Raspberry Pi 5. Can I use it to build the ultimate Pi 5 NAS? Or will we run into issues?

This video is not sponsored, neither Open Sauce nor Radxa paid anything, nor did they have any input into this video—however I did recieve the Radxa Penta SATA HAT featured in this video for review, as well as the Pineberry Pi boards.

My build included the following (some links are affiliate links):

You have two options for 2.5 Gbps networking, if you want it. First, for all PCIe, and stackable boards:

But that will downgrade the PCIe connections to Gen 2.

Guides I referenced:

Contents:

00:00 - The Ultimate Pi 5 NAS
01:35 - YOLO this thing
03:51 - Assembly
08:14 - (Don't) release the magic smoke
10:08 - Software setup - RAID 0
12:59 - It's hot
15:05 - Benchmarking RAID 0
16:54 - Open Sauce
17:45 - Reads over writes
18:56 - 2.5G Networking
22:06 - But is it faster?
23:33 - OMV + ZFS Setup
27:42 - ZFS Performance
30:37 - Oops.
31:17 - DIY or Buy?

[JeffGeerling]

A number of comments have asked about using a 2.5 Gbps USB 3 Ethernet adapter instead of the PCIe switch, which would allow me to run the disks at PCIe Gen 3 speed.

I tested that with a Plugable 2.5G adapter (which is plug and play on the Pi 5), and you're right! I got 270 MB/sec writes for a 50 GB test folder, and 200 MB/sec reads. Check out the GitHub issue linked in the description for all the details.

This little NAS just keeps getting better :)

[tramcrazy]

Jeff: ‘this won’t be as janky as my previous Pi NAS projects’
20 minutes later Jeff: ‘I’m just casually spreading 4 PCBs across my desk with 3 different ribbon cables hoping that PCIe won’t break on me’ 😂

[talbech]

Jeff, you are simply becoming the go-to guy in the RPI community. Best videos out there covering RPI related stuff. Awesome work. Keep it up.

[rangefreewords]

32tb NAS smaller than a brick, this is AWESOME!

[peterwroberts]

You gotta be careful not to say Pi NAS too quickly, lest we become confused about exactly what you're trying to build 😂

[nakfan]

I really like the relaxed style with fewer cuts 👍

[SchoolforHackers]

My wife is going to be pissed at me spending so much time playing with my PiNAS. Thanks Jeff.

[shapelessed]

Am I the only one in fierce love of these small-as-possible SSD file servers?

[stinkertonsden]

Came here for the Pi NAS, stayed for the "I MUST HAVE IT" thermal camera. That snap on lens blew me away.

[aGirts]

I've been checking thrice daily for when this would drop (as my penta hat has been in the mail for a week now). Thanks as always for the service you provide to the community Jeff!

[GuillaumePicquet]

Tip : tell kernel to clear caches between measurements
`sudo sync`
`sudo bash -c 'echo 3 > /proc/sys/vm/drop_caches'`

[HaydonRyan]

Really loving the miniturization of these setups, size and power. It makes me wonder how well this would work in a Van. Seems like a perfect use case for portable storage on the go.

[urfriend]

I think this was an extremely practical experiment. Also, I like to let you know that you don’t need to be practical with your experiments because I enjoy all your experiments and the more bizarre and impractical they are, the more I like them.

[VinnyVidiVintage]

I love how you took something that you said was not going to be jenky like some of your Raspberry Pi 4 attempts, and ended up making it jenky anyway to get the 2.5 networking working.

[RuddODragonFear]

That 20 watt spike at the end of the copy was ZFS flushing the write cache of all the data you sent to write.

[jon]

Jeff bringing back YOLO for 2024.
BTW, experimental with pi builds is my favorite content on your channel. Keep them coming!

[SDWNJ]

Yellow shirt Jeff breaks fins off the heat sink.
Red shirt Jeff: "He took ma jarb!"

[anthoniohasimbolarajaonari]

What I love about this channel is that inexperienced technicians like me get to learn figure out stuff with Jeff during the video. He did it twice here by not reading manuals and documentation during the build and also when he couldn't find how to set up an array other than ZFS

[TomatePasFraiche]

This, this will be my first NAS project

[yalopov]

The year of Raspberry PI DIY NAS is getting closer and closer, I can smell it

Awesome video