Home File Sharing

When reconfiguring my home WIFI router this week, I have a thought to setup a home file sharing network drive. I try the Raspberry Pi approach first, and upgrade to a dedicated NAS (Network Attached Storage) device Synology 220j a few weeks later.

Raspberry Pi 3B+

The Raspberry Pi 3B+ and a case I bought one or two years ago has been collecting dust in a drawer for quite some time. It is time to bring them out and get some use out of them.

My original plan is to connect a retired SSD to the PI via an USB adapter. It would be a little messy to handle the cable and the exposed SSD drive. So I decide to use a Samsung 64GB USB flash drive which is also retired.

The two articles linked below are on the top of Google search.

Pcmag.com - How to Turn a Raspberry Pi Into a NAS for Whole-Home File Sharing

Magpi - Build a Raspberry Pi NAS

After reading the two articles, it seems that the first one suites my needs better. The first tutorial is quite good but I still run into a few problems. Below are some notes I have when setting up the Pi.

1. The Raspberry Pi 3B+ needs a 3A or 2.5A power supply. If the USB power charger does not provide enough voltage, the Pi will start and then automatically shut off.
2. My cell phone quick charger has 3A voltage output and it works well with Pi.
3. The USB stick does not work with sudo mkfs command in the tutorial. I have to use Linux Mint desktop app USB Stick Formatter to format it to EXT4 first and then connect it to Pi.
4. I tried both full version desktop Raspberry Pi OS and Lite minimal version. It seems that the full version is easy to setup WIFI, SSH, and other settings.
5. Even though it is possible to setup the Pi without a monitor, it is much easier to connect it to monitor and do initial setup.
6. The network drive speed is not so fast and it is between 0.5M/s to 2M/s. But it is good enough for sharing files among home computers and my phone.
7. Android file manager app Cx File Explorer can access network drive with SMB protocol.
8. Use address \\raspberrypi in Windows and smb://raspberrypi in Linux to access the shared drive.

Synology 220j NAS

The Synology 220j two bay NAS is on sale a few weeks ago and I get one. The setup process is easy and fast. I install two 2.5 inch laptop hard drives in it, and watch those two youtube vidoes. About one hour later, the NAS is up and running.

Synology DS220j Review by StorageReview - Youtube

Synology DS220J NAS - The Best Way to Store & Backup your Data

Here are the steps to mount the nas in Linux Mint. The idea is mainly from a post on linux mint online forum.

• Edit the /etc/fstab to add a mounting point, and add the line to the end of the file. This assumes that you name the Synology device as nas.

//nas.local/home/ /media/synology cifs \
   credentials=/etc/samba/credentials,uid=1000,gid=1000 0 0 

• Edit the /etc/samba/credentials file to add username and password.

username=<username>
password=<pwd>

• Type command sudo mkdir /media/synology to create the mounting directory.
• Run command sudo mount -a to activate the new line in /etc/fstab.

Ultimate File Sharing

The Synology network drive works well when all computers connect to the same router. My work laptop is on a VPN and it does not have access to the Synology network drive.

An easy way to share files between the work computer (on VPN) and other computers is to use a digital ocean Ubuntu server, and use FileZilla ftp software to upload and download files or folders thru SFTP protocol. I am not sure if this is a correct way to do things but it works well for me now.

Those three commands install FileZilla on Linux Mint.

apt-cache show filezilla # show package info
sudo apt update
sudo apt install filezilla -y

Reference: Q&A on superuser.com

Update on 9/3/2021

In Ubuntu 21.04, the fstab setting does not work. The setting should be in the following format.

//<192.168...>/home/ /media/synology cifs  \
   username=<name>,password=<pw>,uid=1000,gid=1000