Hi, today I’m going to tell you How I built a home NAS with Raspberry Pi and OpenMediaVault. We’ll start with what NAS is and why it’s worth having.
NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a device connected to a network that serves as a central place to store and share files. With NAS, you can easily access your data from different devices at home or even remotely. This is a great solution for backups, storing multimedia or working with files in a local network.
Professional NAS systems can be quite expensive, but fortunately you can build them yourself using off-the-shelf components. In my case, I used an old Raspberry Pi and a few hard drives that I had left over from various projects.
What components did I use?
To build my NAS I used:
- Raspberry Pi 3 – my Raspberry has minimal amount of RAM. Maybe in the future I will replace it with a more powerful Raspberry or an old laptop.
- OpenMediaVault – open-source NAS project,
- A few old hard drives – perfect for reuse,
- NAS case for Raspberry Pi – I found a great 3D model that I can print and it looks great, but for now I’ll use my old case
How did I set it up?
- System installation – I used Raspberry Pi Imager to write a clean system to a microSD card for my Raspberry Pi.
- OpenMediaVault installation – I installed it from the command line via SSH, although you can also use a pre-made image and write it directly to the SD card.
- OpenMediaVault setup – I’ve set up basic network and user settings in OpenMediaVault.
- Adding Disks – I’ve connected my disks via USB and added them as network shares.
- File Sharing – I’ve set up SMB/NFS to allow easy access to files.
- Adding Network Share – I’ve set up NAS access on a computer on my local network and started using it.
What’s next?
I’m currently testing this setup, but I plan on expanding it in the future. As I mentioned earlier, I might upgrade my Raspberry Pi to a newer model or add a dedicated SATA controller that will improve disk performance.
If you want to see how to step by step build such a NAS, I invite you to watch my tutorial on YouTube – Turn a Raspberry Pi or old laptop into a NAS – Simple & Budget-Friendly! (OpenMediaVault Tutorial). You will also find some helpful links below:
🔗 Raspberry PI Imager: Raspberry Pi OS – Raspberry Pi
🔗 OpenMediaVault: https://www.openmediavault.org
🔗 NAS case for Raspberry Pi: https://makerworld.com/en/models/464746-raspberry-pi-5-four-bay-nas
Have old drives and don’t know what to do with them? Building a NAS is a great way to reuse them! If you have any questions or want to share your experiences, let me know in the comments.