On Sat, 17 Aug 2019 15:01:55 +0100, Pancho
wrote:

snip
However, the Pi is a bit 'bitsy' to give someone as a working solution
compared with the Shuttle, because you can actually fit two 2.5"
drives in the shuttle, the additional one going on the SATA connector
for the slim line drive (that's not present). So, the small SSD on
that for the boot / system and 'something bigger' for the actual
shared storage.

With the Pi 4, the Pi is now fast, proper gigabit ethernet. It also goes
up to 4GB RAM so you can run loads of other services on it as well as
file sharing.

True, however, I'm not sure there is an OMV image for the Pi4 yet, or
I'd give it a go on mine (I may have tried to install it on top of
Raspbian but don't think it worked for some Linuxy magic reason).

Also SSDs are moving into cheap mass storage territory, e.g. Samsung
QVO. It's only going to get cheaper, quickly. For occasional NAS use
SSDs are probably already more durable than HDDs. For home use I think
the age of spinners is coming to an end.

For desktop / laptops I think you are right, and possibly commercial
server farms, where heat and energy can be a big issue, cost less so.

I get what you are saying about the Pi not having a nice case, but the
Pi + SSD does seem to be a really neat solution.

There are plenty of nice cases for the various models, my Pi2b is in a
nice ally one, it's just that you have to stand the (USB) drive next
to it, or it on top of the drive it's a std desktop jobby and I can
see that becoming an issue in the wrong hands.

By contrast, a Shuttle PC with both drives internal would be more like
most SOHO NAS's, being all-in-one.

Nothing stopping one putting a RPi and HDD in a single case of course.
;-)

USB drives are faster
than a gigabit lan, so no need to worry about the lack of SATA.

Even USB2?

You can
even run it all off POE.

Handy if you wanted it down the shed or in the loft I guess. ;-)

So happy with the Pi 4 + SSD as a NAS for my frequent NAS files, I was
looking for something to put my old spinning HDDs in, but everything
look a bit expensive or crap.

Are you just running Raspian and some shares or some other NAS
software?

I applied the firmware patch to my Pi4 last night but not sure I was
working it hard enough to see much of an improvement before after. I
also have a length of copper bar and a round heatsink I intend to fit
though the lid of a stock RPi case (when it comes from CPC) so it can
run a bit cooler (especially if on 24/4 as a NAS).

I think as an interim solution I will just put the spinning HDD's in an
old core2duo PC and use them for backup, +occasional use.

It would nice to have a MB with 8 SATA connectors and run JBOD or
whatever for that sort of thing. WHS V1 does that with it's 'Drive
Extender' and across all interfaces and drive sizes. ;-)

In a couple of
years it will all be SSD and I can junk the old HDDs and just use
something like a PI 4 for everything.

Might be a Pi6 by then. ;-)

Even it if I left the old PC on
24/7 it would be three years before the electricity cost was more than
the capital cost of something like a less powerful Synology.

True, but you still have a fairly big box stuck somewhere and often,
fairly noisy (old PSU and CPU fans etc). That's why I liked these
Shuttle PC's, silent and very small. I even considered mounting the
opened Shuttle PC inside an ITX case as then I could extend both SATA
connectors (main HDD and DVD) to std drives, inc 3.5" jobbies inside
the main case.

Cheers, T i m