Building a Powerful Raspberry Pi NAS with the Argon EON Pi Case & OpenMediaVault

check this thing out I just built a Raspberry Pi powered mask using the Argon Eon case and in this video I'm going to tell you all about it [Music] [Music] hello again everyone and welcome back in today's video what I'm going to do is show off a new Raspberry Pi powered Mass build in fact I have the finished build right here it's powered by the Argon Eon case from argon 40 which is going to be the main subject of today's video what I'll do is show you how to put it together install open media Vault open media vault is awesome when it comes to network attached storage I'll show you that as well I'll show you everything you need in order to set up your own Raspberry Pi powered Nas in today's video and by the end of the video I'll give you my thoughts about this case and let you know if I think it's something that you should consider for your build now before we get into the actual topic at hand today I need to give you guys my usual disclaimer this it's the same disclaimer that I give you guys in every video that I do because the policy never changes when I review a product or give you my thoughts on anything it's presented without bias and this video is no exception now one more thing that I'll mention is that this time around this product right here was purchased out of my own money that means that argon 40 the vendor that made this case did not send this in to the studio for review I was so excited that I just wanted to review this that I went and purchased it I did ask argon 40 for a review unit but unfortunately they wouldn't return my emails for some reason I don't know what's going on but anyway I wanted to check it out so I bought it and here it is so we're going to check it out in this video now the way that this video will be structured today is in the next section I'm going to show off the final build I figured that way you won't get too far into the video just to realize that this isn't something that'll work for you I want to give you that information first to make sure that it's a good fit I don't want to waste your time and then after that I'm going to show off the build process for this case after we put it together I'm going to show you the process of setting up the software specifically open media vault which is an awesome solution for network attached storage and then after that I'll show you how to add shared storage to your Nas and as always there's going to be time codes in the description down below so you could jump right to the section that most interests you anyway with all of that out of the way let's check out the Argonne Eon case from Argon 40. foreign what you're seeing right here is the finished build what I'll do in this section is go over the various features of this case and that'll help you decide whether or not this case will fit your use case now First the full name of this product is the Argonne Eon pinass and that's a bit of a mouthful so what I'll do is just refer to this as the Eon case going forward just to keep it simple as you probably already know judging by the title of this video this product enables you to transform a Raspberry Pi into a full featured network attached storage solution now what really got me excited for this case right here is the fact that it supports up to four physical hard drives and that to me is a game changer because the ability to attach a real hard drive to a Raspberry Pi is not new there's been various products released over the years that enable you to do just that but the ability to have up to four hard drives in this case is a game changer and it sets it apart from the majority of the other cases out there but the ability to have multiple hard drives isn't the only thing that I like about this case I mean look at it it looks great it has a very modern aesthetic to it that I really appreciate and it's also quite large it looks like a real Nas solution and it is a real Nas solution is definitely the largest Raspberry Pi case that I've ever reviewed on the channel but it has to be larger in order to fit all of those hard drives so that makes sense on the back of the case we have every single port in one place and this makes it extremely easy to hide cables and manage cables but the fact that we have audio and HDMI ports on the back that means if you wanted to use this case for a desktop build instead of a Nas build you can absolutely do that also installing hard drives is a breeze the side panels are attached by magnets so you can remove those without a tool on the inside there's SATA ports for your hard drives and you simply just attach those and then secure them in place by using the included screws there's holes on the back of the case that will align to whatever type of hard drive you install and then once you secure the hard drives in place that's pretty much it another standout feature is that the power button doubles as an OLED status display they'll show you things like CPU usage RAM usage and so on and having that on the case itself is very very cool in addition there is dedicated software for the Eon case that powers the features of this case it's very easy to install so once you install one script then all of the features of the case are enabled right then and there another neat feature regarding this case is that it has a battery slot built in and by installing a battery you can ensure that your real-time clock will stay synchronized time synchronization is very important in any Nas build so that's a welcome feature now unfortunately there's no battery inside the box so you will have to source that externally I just want to make sure that you are aware of that and I recommend that you do Source a battery for this case because well again having a synchronized clock with a Nas build is very important so all of those features certainly sound good but how difficult is this thing to put together well actually it's just not difficult at all in fact this is literally the easiest Raspberry Pi Project based case that I've ever put together on this channel it's so inconsequential that I would rate the difficulty process as being like a one out of ten it took me all of five minutes to install a Raspberry Pi so if you want something that's easy and fast to put together then this thing right here that checks the box I don't think anybody will have any problems with this at all whatsoever now speaking of the build process let's check that out right now come on anyway inside the box is everything you'll need for the case itself obviously the Raspberry Pi and SD card that you'll need is not included so you will need to Source those that's probably to be expected but I just wanted to be clear but you'll get everything else that you need Inside the Box even a screwdriver that's fairly decent believe it or not now even though you won't receive a Raspberry Pi Inside the Box you will receive a Raspberry Pi mannequin this plastic thing right here I don't know what to call this thing but what it is is a piece of plastic shaped like a Raspberry Pi and its purpose is to demonstrate the correct orientation of the Raspberry Pi if there was even any question so it looks like argon 40 really went all out to make sure that everything was obvious when it comes to assembly anyway what I'll do right now is show you how the assembly process plays out now I wasn't expecting everything to be on the side so my ceiling mounted camera was a little awkward and I apologize for that but thankfully the process is very easy like I mentioned so it shouldn't take too long for me to explain the process anyway here's how it plays out to set up the Argon Eon case what you'll do first is remove the side panels these are attached magnetically so you won't need any tool or anything like that to remove the side panels they should come off with no trouble at all the next thing you'll do is remove the SATA board it's attached to the case by a series of screws it's very self-explanatory so you'll remove those screws and then once you do that you'll just pull the SATA board right out of the case that's very easy and then underneath that you'll see the Raspberry Pi mannequin that I mentioned earlier and you'll also see the daughter board that's responsible for extending some of the ports to the back of the case take a good look at the mannequin because again that shows you the correct position of the Raspberry Pi after you take a look at that you'll remove it and to do that you'll remove the four hex nuts that secure it to the case and there's also a Phillips screw that connects the daughter board to the case so you'll remove that too and then that will allow you to remove the mannequin and the daughter board and what you'll do after that is attach the daughter board to the Raspberry Pi also inside the box you'll find a few thermal pads so what you can do is attach those thermal pads to the case just make sure that you remove the plastic covers from the thermal pads and then you can simply attach those thermal pads to the inside of the case as you see here and then after that you can attach the daughter board and Raspberry Pi combo to the case you'll do that using the same four hex nuts that you just removed and also the Phillips screw that you just removed so you'll secure everything back to the case and then you'll also secure the SATA board and once you do that the build process is done it's literally that simple at this point other than installing hard drives which we will do later the hardware build process is completely done so what I'll do right now is segue into the software side of things there's a few things that I recommend that you install the first of which is the installation script for the case itself that will activate its various features then after we do that I'll walk you through the process of setting up open media Vault so let's get into it foreign so to get started with the software side of things what you'll want to do is grab an SD card we're going to be wiping out the SD card so make sure that there's nothing important on it before we continue what we'll do is install a Raspberry Pi operating system to that SD card what I'll do is go with Raspberry Pi OS that's what I recommend you install as well if you are following along with me but technically there's other operating systems that you can install as well if you want to go another Direction for this process I recommend using the raspberry pi Imager Raspberry Pi imager is a software utility that you can download for just about every operating system so for all of you Mac or Windows users you guys are covered as well so you'll download the version of the tool for your operating system and then you'll grab an SD card you'll want to make sure that you back up anything on that SD card because this process will completely wipe it out anyway you'll insert the SD card into a card reader on your computer launch the Raspberry Pi imager and what that's going to do for us is set up that SD card to be an operating system disk for a Raspberry Pi OS on my end I went with Raspberry Pi OS light which is a special version of Raspberry Pi OS that has no GUI at all that's not required though if you do prefer a desktop environment AKA a GUI that's totally fine there's nothing wrong with having a GUI it's just in my case if I'm setting up a headless server then I generally don't install a desktop environment anyway what I'll do is summarize the process of using the raspberry pi imager I have a dedicated video that goes into it in more detail but it's a very simple application to use and set up so I don't think this is something that very many of you will have a problem with to use this tool what you'll do is choose an operating system like I mentioned I decided to go with Raspberry Pi OS light so you'll choose whatever one you want to go with and then after you do that what I recommend you do is click on the gear icon and this is very important this is how we set up the user account so we'll click on that gear icon and then we'll set up the user account for ourselves so definitely make sure you configure your user account now if you just so happen to be using the version of Raspberry Pi OS with a desktop environment The Standard Version in that case you could skip enabling SSH if that's not something that you intend on using with a desktop environment in Raspberry Pi OS you could simply open up a terminal and there enter in any commands that we will be using later in the video now optionally you can also enable Wi-Fi from this menu as well if you do plan on using Wi-Fi then what you could do is add the information for your Wi-Fi access point right here inside this menu now if you are planning on setting up a Nas I always recommend wired ethernet over Wi-Fi so on my end I didn't bother setting that up but if you only have Wi-Fi available then I suppose that's something that you can set up if you need it anyway once all of that is done we select our SD card make sure you select the correct SD card because again it will be wiped out and then you begin the process after that Raspberry Pi OS will be flashed to your SD card and then once it's finished you eject the SD card insert it into your Eon case and power it on the operating system side of things is ready to go oh sorry I was just Consulting my own book actually you know that's something that I do from time to time because unlike what many of you might think I don't memorize everything that I teach you guys sometimes I actually look at my own book if I want to remember how to do something that I don't do every day but since I'm on the subject of this book check it out mastering Ubuntu Server 4th edition written by Yours Truly it's available right now and I think you're going to love it so if you're looking for an Ubuntu book to teach you everything that you need to know when it comes to managing real Ubuntu servers check it out so definitely check out the book I would really appreciate it anyway let's get back to the video after Raspberry Pi OS is set up and you boot up your new Nas build the next thing we'll do is install the configuration script for the case again what this will do is enable the various features of the case so this is definitely something that you want to install it's very easy to do so it should only take you a couple of minutes anyway to do this what you'll do is connect to the system via SSH if you don't know what the IP address is you can check your router because it should get an IP address by default anyway once you connect to this particular device via SSH or open up a terminal if you are using the desktop GUI version of raspberry pios you'll enter in the command that you see on the screen right now once you do that it's going to download the configuration script from argon 40 again that'll enable all the features of the case it should only take a few minutes and then you'll be good to go now the next thing we're going to do is set up open media Vault but before we do that what I recommend you do on your side is set up a static lease for the IP address for your device that way you don't have to worry about it changing if you've never heard that term before it's the same thing as a DHCP reservation and the reason why I recommend static leases is because that way you'll never have to configure anything inside the operating system itself and you'll still benefit from an IP address that doesn't change even better if you use a different SD card for example or reinstall the operating system you'll never have to worry about going in and setting up a static IP because all of that will be handled by your router or firewall so that's what I recommend that you do now the thing is I would love to show you the process of setting up a static lease but the problem is I have no idea which model of router or firewall you may happen to have and there's going to be thousands of different models out there so there's no way I can create a tutorial that's going to show you how to set this up on your router or firewall but basically all you have to do is set up a DHCP reservation static lease whatever it's called in the interface make sure the IP address can't change and then what we'll do is set up open media vault and to set up open media Vault what you'll do is run the command that you see on the screen right now as an aside I will have all of the commands that you see in this video inside the blog post for this video there's going to be a link to it in the description down below that way if you want to copy and paste you can absolutely do that anyway once you enter in the command that you see right here the process of setting up open media Vault will take a little while to complete what I recommend you do is just step outside for a little bit if you have nice weather maybe grab coffee or something it could take 15 minutes or more depending on the speed of your SD card for this to complete once it does complete it will reboot so make sure that you let it reboot itself don't cancel the process it again takes a while so just let it finish and then once it reboots you can finally log in to open media Vault and to do that all you have to do is type in the IP address of your Raspberry Pi Nas server in an address bar of a browser and that'll take you right to the login page for open media vault so now we have everything set up except for the hard drives we should probably install some hard drives inside the case because well it's not a Nas If we don't have any storage right so let's add some storage so what I'll do right now is walk you through the process of installing hard drives into this particular case and that'll complete our build to do that we'll log in with the default username and password that's provided along with open media Vault itself and the username is going to be admin and then the password will be open media vault and as you can see I'm logged in and now that I'm logged in let's work through the process of configuring the storage so as you could probably guess we'll just go up here to storage we'll click on that and then next we'll click right here where it shows disks and then I'll scroll down and as you can see the two hard drives that I've installed on my end are listed right here so it's a good sign that everything has been detected so we should be good to go when it comes to configuring storage so let's do it so what I'll do is click on the first hard drive right here it doesn't matter what order we do this in but what I'm going to do is wipe out the hard drive so if you don't want to do that if there's already a file system then you should not go along with what I'm about to show you but I'm going to assume that you want to start fresh so what I'll do is click on the first hard drive and then the Eraser icon right here to wipe the hard drive I'll confirm that and click yes and then I'll choose quick so it looks like it's done so I'll click close and we've wiped the first hard drive so I'll just do the same thing for the second one and that's done so I'll click close and then the next thing that we'll do is create a file system so click right here to do that and then I'll click the plus sign here to create a file system and I'll just create a simple file system with extended four so click that right here and then the device I'll just choose the first one and I'll click save okay so it looks like that one's done all right so next what we're going to do is choose where to mount the hard drive so I'll drop this down right here we need to First choose which hard drive we want to mount I've only formatted the first one so far so I'll click on that right here and then I'll click save and as we can see we have the volume listed right here now we do need to apply it before everything is saved though so I'll click this button right here to apply the changes and then I'll click yes I'll go ahead and let that continue and we're all set now when it comes to formatting the other hard drive I'm not going to go ahead and do that here because it's just going to be the same process again you'll repeat this process for any hard drive that you have installed and then once you've done this for each of those drives then you're all set with the storage and you can go ahead and start using it now one thing I do want to point out though I know some of you are probably wondering why didn't you go ahead and install software raid wouldn't that have been better well yes having raid is always better than not having it but the problem is if you click right here to create raid and then you go to select a device we're not going to see any devices listed right here and the reason why is because the hard drives inside the case are going to utilize the USB bus and because of that they're not going to be shown in this menu and it even tells you right here devices connected via USB will not be listed because it's too unreliable so that's why we're unable to set up software raid in this case but using other videos on this channel there's other things that we could do when it comes to storage so you could just go through other videos that I have on the channel and find out other ways to set up storage in Linux but I just showed you how to create a file system on a hard drive and we've done that so we could check the box that storage is ready to go and now that we have all of that out of the way I think it's time for me to give you guys my final opinion about the Argon Eon case foreign so we've arrived at the end of today's video which means it's time for me to give you my overall thoughts on the Argonne Eon case is this something that you should consider buying what are the pros and what are the cons well let's talk about that when it comes to things I love about this case it's very easy to put together and it gives you the ability to set up a proper Nas solution using a Raspberry Pi and sure it's not like we couldn't do that before but most of the cases that are sold only have room for one hard drive when you start to look for a case for the Raspberry Pi that supports more than one hard drive well the selection then becomes quite a bit lower and with all that functionality it still manages to look really good it's a futuristic looking build it looks great and there's all kinds of great things about this case even smaller features that I haven't mentioned yet such as a built-in fan that works very well it's quiet until you start to you know do something crazy with the CPU but even then you can adjust the fan curve so if you do find that the fan comes on too often it's very easy to fix that also I love the status display on the top of the case it's really cool to be able to see some of the performance specs right there on that display and you could do that without opening up a web browser or connecting to the command line and that gives you an overall look at the health of your device and it's just a nice touch I really do like that the assembly process is very very very easy like I mentioned earlier so I don't feel like anybody will have any trouble with the installation process at all so if you are put off by cases that are you know overwhelming to put together the Pirate Man case that I reviewed in a previous video is a great example of that it's very refreshing to have a Raspberry Pi case to put together that barely even constitutes a process at all it's just well easy so yeah I absolutely love the Argon Eon case it's just so awesome but even as awesome as it is there's still a few things that I would like to make you guys aware of that might even constitute downsides and the first of those is the price it's priced at 155 US Dollars and whether or not that's a con depends on your budget if it's outside your budget then it's a con if it's not well if you purchase this case you won't regret it it's a solid build it's mostly made of metal it doesn't feel cheap at all I do feel that you will get your money's worth if you do decide to purchase the Argon Eon case from argon 40. but where I think the constraint comes in regards to the price is going to be the inability and how it is to Source a Raspberry Pi for a reasonable price and this has nothing to do with argon 40. it's just the way things are right now so if you are unable to find a Raspberry Pi that would mean you might have to pay more than retail price to obtain a Raspberry Pi and then when you add that plus the cost of this case that might be cost prohibitive to some people but if you are able to find a Raspberry Pi for a reasonable price I don't think you can go wrong with this case I think the nas build that you'll end up with is pretty awesome now another downside is that the real-time clock is Handy but there's no battery included in the box at all you will have to source that yourself and considering the cost of this case I wouldn't think it would be all that difficult for them to include a battery I mean how much do batteries cost I don't think they cost all that much so I don't think they would have took a financial hit by including a battery I think for the cost of this device I would expect a battery to be inside the box but I just want you guys to be aware of the fact that you will have to Source a battery there is not a battery inside the box now another thing I want to point out is that when you install hard drives inside the Argon Eon case those hard drives are going to use the USB bus given that your raid options are severely limited in the case of open media Vault for example it even tells you in the interface that raid over USB is unreliable and it won't even give you the option to set that up considering how important rate is to NAS Solutions I think that's a big problem however it is possible to architect your own solution but you'll have to put a little bit more work into it so no matter what I think the biggest consideration here is whether or not the USB bus for hard drives is going to be a problem for your use case now with all of that in mind I do feel that the Argonne Eon case is fantastic if you are looking to build a Raspberry Pi powered Nas then I think it's going to be a very worthy Contender for that project if any of the limitations via USB aren't something that's going to impact you then especially check out this case anyway let me know what you thought of this review or anything else for that matter in the comments down below this video what I'm going to do is get back to editing the next video for you guys right now I'm working on a bunch of things for you and if you want to see what I'm working on then be sure to subscribe to learn Linux TV for the latest in Linux and I'll see you in the next video thank you [Music] [Music] foreign [Music]

Channel: Learn Linux TV

Views: 45,207

Keywords: Linux, gnu/linux, LearnLinuxTV, Learn Linux TV, LearnLinux.TV, Learn Linux, Linux Training, Linux Tutorials, Raspberry Pi, NAS, Network Attached Storage, Argon, Argon40, Argon 40, Pi NAS, Raspberry Pi Build, Homelab, raspberry pi 4, pi 4, open media vault, raspberry pi, network attached storage, raspberry pi 4 nas ssd, raspberry pi 4 nas project, raspberry pi nas, raspberry pi 4 nas, raspberry pi nas server, nas server, pi 4 nas, model b, raspberry pi 4 nas setup

Id: BxgNpi5HrIs

Length: 27min 26sec (1646 seconds)

Published: Tue May 09 2023