Turning a Raspberry Pi into a budget-friendly NAS is one of the most popular projects for the SBC family, and for good reason. The Arm processor powering the Raspberry Pi consumes a fraction of the energy guzzled by power-hungry server CPUs, and you can outfit it with everything from fast NVMe SSD drives to hardcore HDDs with the right HAT. That said, the makeshift NAS has one too many drawbacks if you're planning to use it as a primary storage server – especially when there are better, cheaper options on the market.

5 Limited support for NAS-centric distros

OpenMediaVault is all you’ve got

Despite featuring better software support than rival Arm-based SBCs, the Raspberry Pi series doesn’t have too many options for a NAS-oriented distribution. TrueNAS Scale and Unraid are only available on x86 devices, making OpenMediaVault the only NAS operating system at your disposal.

Setting it up isn’t a walk in the park if you’re on the Raspberry Pi 5, and you’ll have to settle for a smaller set of plugins due to compatibility issues with its Arm architecture. Don’t get me wrong: OMV has enough features to justify its position as one of the big three NAS operating systems. But if you want to leverage the hardcore TrueNAS Scale in your setup, you’ll have to look somewhere other than the Raspberry Pi family.

4 Setting up RAID is a major pain

The SBC can’t handle multiple drives

If you thought the Raspberry Pi was a bit lacking in the OS department, the hardware side doesn’t fare any better for a dedicated NAS setup. You have a couple of ways to add storage drives to the Raspberry Pi-flavored NAS, but each method has some issues. For example, portable HDDs are fairly cost-effective and can be interfaced with the Raspberry Pi’s USB ports, though the SBC can’t power more than two drives on its own.

Heck, mine starts to run into performance issues the moment I throw a third HDD into the mix, and adding a powered USB hub can make the initial investment even more expensive. Likewise, you can technically use SATA HATs to connect internal HDDs/SSDs to the SBC, but depending on the number of drives in your arsenal, you may have to invest in an external PSU and turn the makeshift NAS into a rat’s nest.

For a simple 1-2 drive NAS, the Raspberry Pi won’t really have any issues. But once you start getting into multi-drive RAID configurations, it becomes apparent that the SBC can’t replace conventional NAS servers.

3 Performance isn’t its strong suit

Forget about running a VM or two on the RPi

One of the biggest advantages of NAS devices is that they can easily double as self-hosting workstations capable of running dozens of containers – and even a handful of virtual machines — provided your storage server has enough resources for virtualization workloads. While the newer Raspberry Pi SBCs can run their fair share of containerized applications, they’re not very capable of handling both containers and NAS-heavy tasks at the same time.

And that’s before you add virtual machines into the equation. Despite the faster CPUs in the modern RPi units, they’re not powerful enough to handle VMs, containers, and typical file-sharing loads at the same time.

2 Slow Ethernet speeds

1GbE won’t cut it for ultra-fast SSDs

Let’s say you’re rocking the Raspberry Pi 5 in your computing lab and have armed it with a high-speed NVMe SSD. Unfortunately, the drive won’t be able to spread its wings in NAS workloads – and that’s due to the 1 Gigabit Ethernet connection on the Raspberry Pi. Since the 1GbE interface can only support a maximum speed of 125MB/s, your high-speed SSDs (or even the faster RAID models, assuming you managed to set one up) will get heavily throttled by the slow Ethernet standard.

Thankfully, this issue has a somewhat decent solution. USB-to-Ethernet adapters have become more popular lately, and you can grab a 2.5/5Gbps USB-to-RJ45 connector for the USB 3.0 ports on your Raspberry Pi. Alternatively, tinkerers with a Raspberry Pi 5 can go for an NIC HAT to free up their USB ports, though you’ll have to be mindful of the price. On that subject…

1 HATs and adapters are expensive

And thin clients cost less than a fully-spec’d Raspberry Pi

Turning your Raspberry Pi into a hardcore storage solution involves spending a pretty penny to equip it with the right HATs and adapters. For instance, an NIC is a must-have for multi-HDD/SSD setups, and you’ll also need a cooling solution to ensure your Raspberry Pi doesn’t run into thermal issues when subjected to 24/7 NAS workloads. You’ll also require adapters to add a fleet of storage drives to the SBC. And that’s assuming you can find a Raspberry Pi at its MSRP.

Once you factor everything in, the cost of the setup can easily surpass $150. For the same price, you can grab x86 mini-PCs – or better yet, thin clients – that provide more value per dollar as a NAS. Sure, you may have to pay a little more on the energy bills with a dedicated x86 system, but you get solid performance in return.

Nevertheless, the Raspberry Pi has its place in every computing lab

While I may have gone too hard on the Raspberry Pi in this post, I’d like to clarify that the SBC family can serve as a decent NAS, provided you take its limitations into consideration. Personally, I’ve used mine as a file-sharing server without any issues, and it can even double as a secondary NAS.

But if you’re a power user who’s looking for a small, energy-efficient replacement for your NAS, I can’t recommend the Raspberry Pi series. Not only are these SBCs lacking on the performance front, but you’ll also require a lot of investment in the form of adapters and HATs – money that could be better spent on a mini-PC or a thin client.