Raspberry Pi as a NAS - the quest begins

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I have started the journey of making a RPI NAS.

Question:
I’m guessing that powering the 4 drives from the RPI USB ports is not a good idea.

A USB hub would be the better way to go - right?

I am going to use Open Vault to run the NAS part.

Anyone used it? Thoughts? “Traps”?

If I do use a USB Hub, that will be 2 power points needed. 1 - Hub, 1 - RPI.
I am wanting to make a unit for the NAS. So would it be worth my while putting 2 x 240 sockets within the NAS box and only have one 240v power cable?

Update:
After reading stuff, I am not sure the RPI is worth it.
I have seen the Orange Pi has better specs for NAS working.

If anyone can help with that too, I would appreciate it.

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Hi Andrew,

You are correct, using the Pi’s USB ports would be a bad idea. I think you’d be lucky to power 1 drive, let alone 4. A passive hub won’t work though, you’d need a powered one, but if your USB hub had enough ports, you could run the Pi off one of those and plug the drives into the others. That might save you having to mess with 240V sockets and just have the 1 plug coming out. This could definitely work, but you’d be using USB 2.0 ports and a 1.4 GHz processor (assuming Pi 3B+), so the speed wouldn’t be that high.

I have no experience with the Orange Pi at all, so I can’t offer any help with that unfortunately.

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