Raspberry Pi NAS vs. Asustor Drivestor 4, Is It Better to Buy or DIY?

Thanks Michael for taking look at our NAS devices! We love listening to all types of comments, whether they be praise, questions, suggestions and criticism. Feel free to send a reply and we will happily answer! Thanks again!

That's a beautiful custom NAS build! With a CM4, you may be able to eke out a bit more performance (probably closer to 100 MB/sec writes, 110 MB/sec reads) since you could use native SATA, and you could also make it more complex with a 2.5 Gbps PCIe network adapter... but you end up with diminishing returns (and higher costs!). I think you come to the same conclusion that if you need the performance and/or reliability (and don't want to DIY with all the little struggles that comes with), a prebuilt NAS is still worth the extra cost. Especially for this channel, where I'm sure you have enough video content that you need something you can just throw down and depend on! Just make sure you have a 2nd backup for anything important (or full 3-2-1).

I've literally been looking at doing this myself so this is the perfect video comparison I needed

You can get more speed out of the drives on the Pi by enabling "write cache" in OMV. Under "Storage > Disks" and edit every drive. I am getting on my Pi4 4GB around 170mb/s. On small files (storing 3D Print files on it). I even set up a pseudo Raid1. Set up 2 Storages, one you write too, the 2nd for the backups. Under Services > Rsync set up a task (cronjob) to sync everything from drive 1 to drive 2, on the frequent you want. This is how i am running my PiOMV.

Fascinating and thanks. The laser cut case was a very cool additional part of the project.

Best comparation ever!!! Thank you for that.

Thanks you for nice videos. I love your editing. love the background music and detailed data(specially power consumption) . take love 💖💖

Asustor NAS with 2 drives is $560 ($830-$270=$560) Almost the same as the Pi but with much less time investment.

Yep. Tried the Pi4. Tried a CM4 with m.2 RAID card. The best DIY solution continues to be old PC hardware. Sleep it when not in use and overall power should be about the same as a Pi NAS.

If you can get ahold of one, the RasPi CM4 is much more suited for use as a NAS. There are 3rd party carrier boards with the needed hardware baked in or for a more custom build there's the official carrier board. If you want to really dig in and learn a lot of neat things, the Raspberry Pi Foundation has published the info you need to design your own carrier board for a completely custom setup. While it's not an afternoon project, it's also easier than you'd expect.

One thing that concerns me is longevity of software support, security patches etc from the NAS vendor. If vendor desupports a device, you're on your own. Wheras RPi open source will usually have patches available.

That's a pretty and neat little Pi NAS, sadly I don't have access to a laser cutter so that's not a proposition for me. My approach, after unsatisfactory results with proprietary single bay backup drives, has been to re-purpose an old PC, first attempt using FreeNAS but, with my non-existent Linux skills that was way too complicated. Instead, I went with a Windows configuration and RAID (2x4TB) which is much more into my tech skills zone. Living in a tropical environment, cooling wasn't straightforward so I was plagued with system crashes and long times to recover the RAID sync. So, I solved that by ditching the RAID and installed FreeFileSync, added a better case fan and overheating problem eliminated. I mention FreeFileSync in the context of your Pi config only allowing 2 x USB connections and therefore separate disk volumes. I've found FFS to be simple and reliable.

@Michael Klements Do you have any suggestion for a cheap and reliable solution, like an enclosure for two 3.5" hard drives in conjunction with the Raspberry Pi?

I used the same setup as you except I only had one drive discoverable on the network and I used the sync option in OMV to setup a sync to the second drive every 15 minutes. Essentially a redundant workaround.

Very nice comparison. I am myself using a Pi Based NAS mainly because, I just use my NAS for casual data sharing, running services like jDownloader, transmission, PhotoPrism etc and also using Syncthing to backup my MacBook data folder in real time. It serves my purpose and as I bought my Pi long time back, it is very cost effective. But I recommend using a dedicated NAS for heavier usage or making something with little bit powerful CPU and motherboard and at-least a 2.5G networking. BTW - I really liked your Pi Case. I wanted to make something like that for my Pi but I was too confused on how to design so that they would fit properly on sides. I ended up making a 3D Printed case and using black transparent acrylic on the side. I will definitely try to make acrylic one now. It looks way cooler than my 3D Printed one. Also I am using same display and showing Date/Time/IP/CPU/Memory and Temp. If you would like then I can share my python script with you.

I did something similar using a mini-stx motherboard, i5-6400, 16gb ddr4 sodimm and 2x 3.5 10tb wd red hard drives. It has a male 3.5 in hd power (like a thin mini itx motherboard) that looks a lot cleaner cable wise.

Does anyone have this case prebuilt / cut for purchase? I don't have a laser cutter to make it myself unfortunately.

The price is even closer than you share. The two bay Drivestor is like $179

umm you know they have pi cases with SATA ports and such right? No need for USB

im trying to do exactly this, but I cannot find a case that supports 3.5" drives and a pi... I found a janky drive rack I am currently planning to drill holes on the top for my pi... Not completely satisfied, but I can run a 140mm fan across everything. (I already have a spare noctua)