Upcycling: Building Micro-NAS with Banana Pi M1, FreeBSD and ZFS Write FreeBSD to SD card and prepare speed exhaust localize external hard drive Start FreeBSD Conclusion When we switched to FreeBSD out of curiosity tested various ARM-based single board computers (Single Board Computer / SBC), two older Banana Pi M1s stood out from the crowd: The SBCs, which at the time were intended to compete with the first Raspberry Pi, shone on their market debut with their 1 GHz “fast” Dual core processor Allwinner A 20, 1 GByte memory, GBit Ethernet and a SATA port. BSD operating systems ran somewhat surprisingly on the microcomputers.

Micro-NAS based on Banana-Pi-M1 Required parts Banana Pi M1, power supply, UART converter, jumper cable, discarded hard drive, Banana-Pi-S-ATA cable, PC Time budget Experienced hobbyists get the micro NAS up and running within a few hours, beginners should Schedule 1-2 afternoons. With FreeBSD a server system is available that is already in the 32 – Bit versions provides a usable ZFS implementation. This gave birth to the idea of ​​building a FreeBSD / ZFS team from two Banana Pi M1s and testing and exploring the lower limit of what is feasible in terms of NAS. Spoiler: It didn’t go smoothly. But all the hurdles could be overcome with little manual work. From there on, this project teaches valuable NAS and FreeBSD basics.

In the In contrast to most single-board computers, the Banana Pi M1 offers a SATA connection with power supply for 2.5 “hard drives and SSDs.

(Image: Michael Plura)

FreeBSD on SD Write and prepare the card Since FreeBSD is a Unix under the free BSD license, it is available free of charge from the FreeBSD website. We have the FreeBSD version 12. 2. (Download) that was current at the time the article was written. You should only use an older version use if parts of hardware or software do not work with a current version of FreeBSD, which in our experience is extremely rare.

Access to all contents of heise + exclusive tests, advice & background: independent , critically founded c’t, iX, Technology Review, Mac & i, Make, c’t read photography directly in the browser register once – read on all devices – can be canceled monthly first month free, then monthly 9 , 95 € Weekly newsletter with personal reading recommendations from the editor-in-chief Start FREE month Start the FREE month now Heise + already subscribed?

Sign in and read Register now and read the article immediately More information about heise +