Best way to use Raspberry Pi as a NAS?

[I Need a Drink]

I am thinking about buying a Raspberry Pi 4 to make into a cheap NAS as well as run Homebridge and Pi-hole to replace my dead Windows Home Server.

I don't need features since my media players require no transcoding and I don't need a Plex server or anything like that. I just need to be able to have any drives that are hooked up to the Pi show up on the network similar to how a Windows File Share might show up so that my players can read the files and my Windows and Mac machines can read and write to the shares.

I read about Open Media Vault, but it looks like it replaces the standard Linux setup on the Pi and I also want to run Homebridge to replace my Wemo Bridge (which requires a daily reboot) and so I can also run non-Homekit items with my Homepods.

Can I setup a simple file share to each drive with a Pi (and how), or do I need to use something like Open Media Vault to do what I want?

Thank you.

 

[jrichards1408]

I am thinking about buying a Raspberry Pi 4 to make into a cheap NAS as well as run Homebridge and Pi-hole to replace my dead Windows Home Server.

I don't need features since my media players require no transcoding and I don't need a Plex server or anything like that. I just need to be able to have any drives that are hooked up to the Pi show up on the network similar to how a Windows File Share might show up so that my players can read the files and my Windows and Mac machines can read and write to the shares.

I read about Open Media Vault, but it looks like it replaces the standard Linux setup on the Pi and I also want to run Homebridge to replace my Wemo Bridge (which requires a daily reboot) and so I can also run non-Homekit items with my Homepods.

Can I setup a simple file share to each drive with a Pi (and how), or do I need to use something like Open Media Vault to do what I want?

Thank you.

Install rasbian and then install samba file share and you can stream stuff as in just accessing media files from a nas file system