Question Which Raspberry Pi do I need ?

[Oasis Curator]

Here's my Background:

I've been thinking for ages how I can have a temporary NAS, which I use to back up files every so often.

The backing up is done via Windows manually - I just connect the hard drives to my PC and drag and drop. I'm okay with this.

However, NAS' are quite expensive.

I only need a way to connect 5 or 6 hard drives to my main PC so I looked at cheaper DAS, which for £200/5-bay is not so bad.

Then I came across using a Pi to run OpenMediaVault, so the DAS is effectively a NAS.

I am completely not Raspberry Pi at all, but this sounds a bit fun and something I could probably manage.



Now for the Questions:

PiHut does a raspberry Pi 4b kit.
Firstly, is the 4b the way to go? Or should I pay the £20 more and go for a 5?

As this will only be used to back up files every 4-6 months, is 1GB of RAM okay or should I get more (the 2Gb is £9 more)?

They also sell a fan.
Do I need this (£5 more)? It will only be on for a few hours every 6 months.

If I do need the fan, will it fit in this case:
https://thepihut.com/products/raspberry-pi-starter-kit?variant=20336446046270

Or would the case be useless?

Thank you kindly.

After reading, I don't think a Raspberry Pi is the way to go.
For the same price as the starter kit, I can get an HP Elite Desk and just hook that up to my Das. Shouldn't need to faff with reformatting disks into Linux friendly formats and will probably just be easier.

 

[Moonstick2]

If you're going to all the trouble of setting up a NAS, why the intent to only back-up every 4 - 6 months?

You should be backing up far more regularly anyway. One of the main reasons for setting up a NAS for backup is to make regular automated backups easier, as in usually at least daily. Otherwise you may as well save your time and money and stick with an external HDD that you attach only to perform a backup.

I'd suggest that instead of looking into a NAS, you first look into a backup method other than drag and drop 2-3 times a year. Find some software that performs the backup more efficiently, look into increasing the frequency of your backups, and make sure you have more than one copy of your data (usual recommendations are at least three: one 'live', one copy on a different drive, one off-site somehow). Once you've got a much better backup system in place you can then start looking into getting a NAS if that's still good for you.