[SOLVED] USB backup over local network?

[bburd]

I'm trying to add a backup drive that's connected to my computer via local ethernet. Currently, I have an old Airport Extreme, but its USB port is USB 1 or 2, so it's horribly slow. I found AnywhereUSB devices with USB 3 that are beyond my budget for this project. I thought about getting an access point with USB 3, but the published specs don't say whether they mount the drives as read-only or not. I also thought about attaching a Raspberry Pi to my network. A full-blown laptop would be overkill for this task.
Can anyone offer some advice about all this?

 

[bill001g]

I guess it depends on how slow it really is. USB2 can run to 450mbps if I remember correctly.

Most routers throw in the "free" NAS feature but it is mostly just something to make the feature list longer. Most tend to do a very poor job and are slow.

A number of people have used raspberry pi as a NAS so if you have the skills I suspect that will be your cheapest option.

Many of those USB external drives do not have the best performance. It all depends on what actual drive is being used.

 

[Alabalcho]

For Raspberry-based NAS, you'd look for RPi 4, and when you factor our RPi itself, SD card, USB-to-SATA adapter, PSU, case, fan, and hand-holdging - you're reaching the price of off-the-shelf dual-bay NAS.

 

[gggplaya]

The Raspberry PI 4 can do NAS read speeds of 110MB/s (full ethernet speed) and write speeds of about 68MB/s which is not horrible.

I'm not sure why Raspberry pi 4 costs so much on Amazon, but at microcenter a full starter kit costs $75: https://www.microcenter.com/product/625367/raspberry-pi-official-pi-4-essentials-kit I'm assuming you already have an external USB hard drive.

You can install OPENMEDIAVAULT which will give you a full blown NAS with access credentials and a nice GUI like any other NAS: https://linuxhint.com/raspberry_pi_open_media_vault/