Raspberry Pi NAS

The article I read is: Raspberry Pi as a NAS (Network Attached Storage).

Well, it's not really an article, but did somehow end up in my Google Play Newsstand feed.

One thing that irks me is that if you're planning on making a low-power NAS that's decent, then the Banana Pi would be the better option because of the SATA port and gigabit LAN (both the Raspberry Pi 3 and the Banana Pi have Wifi, though the instructable utilises LAN, as it's probably the Raspberry Pi 2). The main drawback would probably have to be that with the Banana Pi can only support up to 2TB drives connected to the SATA port.

Now if you happened to have an unused Raspberry Pi laying around, then yes, it would make sense to utilise it to make a low-powered NAS, given that the read/write speeds are going to be much lower because of the USB 2.0 and/or 10/100 LAN.

My other irk is that NAS consumption really depends on the brand and type. Yes NAS units can easily draw over 10 watts when spinning a 3.5 inch hard drive (for a one-disk unit), but some (if not most) NAS units have a standby mode, where it spins down the hard drive(s) and waits for activity.

What's a bit interesting it that the person used a serial connection to access the Raspberry Pi. The main advantage would be that if you're setting a static IP address, then you will still have access to it without having to reopen an SSH line to it, but if you're not, then why bother spending more money on the cable?

With the CFS, I didn't bother with Samba, though I could have and have made it a bit easier to mount in Windows, but considering how rarely I'm using Windows these days, it's not worth any of the hassle (if it is at all).

Not sure what NAS units the person is thinking of, but my Synology NAS is neither fire nor water proof/resistant (might be a bit water resistant as long as it doesn't run toward any vents).

Again, while it's not a bad idea in general, it only seems worth doing if you already have a Raspberry Pi (and maybe an external hard drive) that aren't in use.