Darth Vader
From the Dark Side
Spurned on by various threads on the mis-concept that a NAS provides backup (it doesn't) and pfm members with issues using Raspberry pi I have put together a simple low cost file server that also automatically backs up my data to a separate similar server. Should the primary server fail such as in phutt! then I can go to the backup to access my data and continue where I left off. Its not the same as a commercial resilient system but its close and for peanuts in comparison.
I had a pi4 and a pi3B lying around so I set up the pi4 as a file server for music, photos etc. Out of the box and once WiFi has been set up you just need to update the system and install Samba to share files and plug in a USB SSD or even a 2.5" spinny disk (I tried 2 old portable USB disks) and you have a cheap file server. The pi4 has two USB 3 summat ports and my guess is 3.1 gen1 as the plastic insert is pale blue (USB3 is dark blue). Speed tests indicate that this USB port at around 3GBps is much faster (about 10x) throughput than the pi3B USB2 ports.
You can if you want activate the VNC server (I did) so that the Pi4 can be used without KVM for a small footprint. I also used an M.2 SATA SSD so a small installation easily hidden.
I set up the pi3B in the same way so that I had a second file server that can be put elsewhere. The USB2
interface is slower but since my Mac Mini music player stores music in a memory cache the lower access speed doesn't matter.
So two almost identical file servers so why not use these as a resilient almost hot backup system. The key was to install deja-dup. This software has been configured to run an automatic scheduled backup of the pi4 server data to the pi3B server.
Bingo a resilient automatically backed up file server for peanuts and one that is small and silent. My Mac Mini music server points to both file servers so if one goes AWL I can use the other.
Of course you can if you want use the Ethernet ports instead of WiFi but the latter works fine for me.
The latest pi OS automatically mounts USB disks with Windows file systems such as FAT32/NTFS (not Apple) etc for read/write access. Its becoming a really friendly OS and well suited for novice newcomers.
The time expended to set up each server is around 20-30 mins each. However the updating and intial copy of files took some time so I took a walk and sniffed the sea air.
Food for thought,
DV
I had a pi4 and a pi3B lying around so I set up the pi4 as a file server for music, photos etc. Out of the box and once WiFi has been set up you just need to update the system and install Samba to share files and plug in a USB SSD or even a 2.5" spinny disk (I tried 2 old portable USB disks) and you have a cheap file server. The pi4 has two USB 3 summat ports and my guess is 3.1 gen1 as the plastic insert is pale blue (USB3 is dark blue). Speed tests indicate that this USB port at around 3GBps is much faster (about 10x) throughput than the pi3B USB2 ports.
You can if you want activate the VNC server (I did) so that the Pi4 can be used without KVM for a small footprint. I also used an M.2 SATA SSD so a small installation easily hidden.
I set up the pi3B in the same way so that I had a second file server that can be put elsewhere. The USB2
interface is slower but since my Mac Mini music player stores music in a memory cache the lower access speed doesn't matter.
So two almost identical file servers so why not use these as a resilient almost hot backup system. The key was to install deja-dup. This software has been configured to run an automatic scheduled backup of the pi4 server data to the pi3B server.
Bingo a resilient automatically backed up file server for peanuts and one that is small and silent. My Mac Mini music server points to both file servers so if one goes AWL I can use the other.
Of course you can if you want use the Ethernet ports instead of WiFi but the latter works fine for me.
The latest pi OS automatically mounts USB disks with Windows file systems such as FAT32/NTFS (not Apple) etc for read/write access. Its becoming a really friendly OS and well suited for novice newcomers.
The time expended to set up each server is around 20-30 mins each. However the updating and intial copy of files took some time so I took a walk and sniffed the sea air.
Food for thought,
DV