Building a Headless NAS with a Raspberry Pi 5

I needed more storage. I didn't want to pay for cloud storage subscriptions forever. So naturally, I built my own network-attached storage server out of a Raspberry Pi 5, a couple of hard drives, and too many hours of my weekend.

Here's everything I did, everything that went wrong, and what I'd change if I were starting over.

What you'll end up with: A headless NAS accessible from any device on your network, with Samba file sharing, automatic backups, and a web dashboard — all for under $120 in hardware.

Parts List

Part	What I got	Cost
Single-board computer	Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB RAM)	$80
Power supply	Official Pi 5 27W USB-C PSU	$12
Storage drives	2× WD Red 2TB (USB 3.0 enclosures)	$70
Boot drive	Samsung 32GB microSD (Class 10)	$8
Enclosure	Argon ONE M.2 case (modified)	$25

Setting Up the OS

I flashed Raspberry Pi OS Lite (64-bit, no desktop) onto the microSD using the Raspberry Pi Imager. Key thing: enable SSH before you boot so you can connect headlessly from day one.

# After first boot, update everything
sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade -y

# Install Samba for file sharing
sudo apt install samba samba-common-bin -y

Configuring Samba

Edit the Samba config to add your share. I kept it simple — one big share for everything:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

# Add this at the bottom:
[brojects-nas]
  path = /mnt/storage
  browseable = yes
  read only = no
  guest ok = no
  valid users = franklin

Then set a Samba password for your user and restart the service:

sudo smbpasswd -a franklin
sudo systemctl restart smbd

Mounting the Drives

I'm running both drives in a simple RAID 1 mirror using mdadm. Not the fastest setup but if one drive dies, I don't lose everything.

# Install mdadm
sudo apt install mdadm -y

# Create RAID 1 array (replace sda, sdb with your drive names)
sudo mdadm --create /dev/md0 --level=1 --raid-devices=2 /dev/sda /dev/sdb

# Format and mount
sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/md0
sudo mkdir /mnt/storage
sudo mount /dev/md0 /mnt/storage

What I'd Do Differently

Use an M.2 SSD for the boot drive instead of microSD — SD cards wear out fast under constant read/write
Get a proper UPS (uninterruptible power supply) — a power cut mid-write corrupted one of my drives early on
Set up email alerts for drive health from the start using smartmontools

Lesson learned: Always set up monitoring before you start using it. I lost a week of files before I realized one drive was failing silently.

Final Result

The NAS has been running for 6 weeks straight with zero downtime. Transfer speeds over gigabit ethernet average around 110 MB/s which is more than fast enough for streaming video off it from the couch. Total cost came in at about $195 — that's less than two months of cloud storage for the equivalent capacity.

Definitely worth it. Next version I want to add a proper RAID controller and swap out the Pi for a cheap mini PC with actual SATA ports. But for now — it works.