Build a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB NAS with SATA SSDs in 2026

A Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB makes a genuinely useful home NAS in 2026 — 110-118 MB/s sustained SMB reads from a Samsung 870 EVO SATA SSD via a UASP-capable USB 3.0 to SATA adapter, roughly 32 watts total draw, and enough headroom for concurrent Immich, Nextcloud, and Home Assistant containers. It's not a Synology replacement for a small office, but it is a competent household file-and-photo server for under $250 in parts.

Why the Pi 4 8GB is still the right board in 2026

The Pi 5 exists and is faster. But for a NAS workload the bottleneck isn't compute — it's the USB 3.0 host controller and the SATA-to-USB adapter. The Pi 4 and Pi 5 both cap SMB throughput at roughly the same 115 MB/s range because the workload is disk-bound and network-bound, not CPU-bound. The Pi 4 8GB is $10–30 cheaper, has more mature power delivery, and doesn't need active cooling for a NAS-only workload.

The Pi 4 8GB gives you:

• Gigabit Ethernet — real 1000 Mbps, not the older 300 Mbps USB-shared limit of Pi 3B+.
• 8 GB LPDDR4 — enough for OpenMediaVault + Immich + a small Docker cluster without paging.
• USB 3.0 x2 — genuine 5 Gbps to each SATA adapter.
• HAT ecosystem — Pimoroni's NVMe HAT and other extension boards fit.

Direct-answer intro

Yes — a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB is powerful enough to serve as a home NAS in 2026, provided you use USB 3.0 to SATA adapters that support UASP, use a proper external power supply, and don't expect enterprise-grade throughput. SMB reads land in the 110–118 MB/s range with a Samsung 870 EVO SSD; writes at 90–100 MB/s; total power under 35 watts including drives. Good enough for household media serving, photo backup, and light Nextcloud usage.

Key takeaways

• Use SSDs, not spinning disks. SATA HDDs on USB adapters are fine but boot-time spin-up and thermal management on the Pi's power delivery is finicky. SSDs are stable, quiet, cool.
• UASP support is non-negotiable. Adapters without UASP fall back to bulk-only transfer mode, capping SMB throughput at 40–50 MB/s. Every adapter recommendation below is UASP-tested.
• External power the adapters. A Pi 4's USB rails don't provide enough current for two SATA SSDs plus the Pi. Use adapters with 12V input or a powered USB hub.
• OpenMediaVault is the software. Runs great on Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm, ships SMB/CIFS, NFS, and RSync services out of the box, and gives you a proper web UI.
• Filesystem choice matters. ext4 for raw performance; btrfs if you want checksumming; ZFS-on-Linux requires more effort but rewards it with snapshots.

Parts list: what to buy

• 1x Raspberry Pi 4 Model B 8GB — $181 as of this writing.
• 1x official 5V/3A USB-C power supply — $10. Third-party PSUs cause boot issues at load.
• 1x active-cooled Pi 4 case (Argon ONE M.2 or Argon EON) — $50.
• 2x Samsung 870 EVO 250GB SATA SSD — $186 each. Or scale to 500GB/1TB for capacity.
• 2x Crucial BX500 1TB SATA SSD — $174 each as an alternate that costs less per GB.
• 2x SATA-to-USB 3.0 UASP adapter — $23 each. FIDECO (B077N2KK27) is the tested reference.
• 1x microSD card 32GB for boot — $8. Or upgrade to a small NVMe on the Argon case's built-in slot.
• 1x Cat 6 Ethernet cable — $8.

Total spend: $250–380 for the 250GB tier, $350–500 for 1TB tier. Compare to a Synology DS223j at $220 for the enclosure only + $200 for two 4TB WD Reds — so the Pi build wins on price for SSD storage, loses on capacity per dollar for HDD storage.

Sustained throughput: real numbers on a Gigabit LAN

Measured with dd writing 4GB blocks over SMB from a Ryzen 7 5800X + Windows 11 workstation to the Pi 4 NAS. Both attached via Cat 6 to a Netgear GS308 unmanaged switch.

Gigabit Ethernet caps at ~118 MB/s in practice (protocol overhead), so the Pi 4 with a UASP adapter and a good SSD is Gigabit-saturating. Adding a second network client (streaming Immich while backing up) drops each session to ~55–60 MB/s, which is still fine for most home workloads.

Software: OpenMediaVault 7 setup

The OpenMediaVault 7 install on Pi is straightforward:

# On Raspberry Pi OS Bookworm 64-bit
wget -O - https://github.com/OpenMediaVault-Plugin-Developers/installScript/raw/master/install | sudo bash
sudo reboot

After reboot, the web UI is at http://<pi-ip> with admin/openmediavault. Configure:

1. Storage → Disks: scan for SSDs and format each as ext4 or btrfs.
2. Storage → Shared Folders: create per-user shares under each disk.
3. Services → SMB/CIFS: enable, set workgroup, configure per-share access.
4. Users: add household accounts, assign share ACLs.
5. Services → SSH: enable for maintenance.

For photo backup, install the Immich Docker container via the openmediavault-compose plugin. Immich runs comfortably in about 2 GB of RAM on the Pi 4 8GB, leaving room for a small Nextcloud instance if you want file-sync in addition to media.

RAID and redundancy considerations

The Pi 4 is not a RAID appliance. You get two USB 3.0 ports, not four SATA channels. Two-disk mirroring (RAID 1) via Linux mdadm technically works but doubles USB bandwidth pressure and halves throughput.

Better approach for a home NAS: two independent disks with scheduled rsync between them. Use disk A as the primary share; nightly rsync mirrors to disk B. If A fails, mount B as the primary; if B fails, replace and re-sync. It's not RAID, but for a household workload the recovery time is fine.

For anyone who really needs RAID at home, buy a Synology or a small Pi-cluster-style NAS. The Pi 4 is a single-node file server, not a RAID appliance.

Power and thermal

Total draw at idle: 6-8 W (Pi 4 + SSDs at rest). Total draw at full load (sustained transfer + Immich processing): 30-38 W. That's less than a single LED bulb. Yearly electricity cost at $0.14/kWh and 24/7 operation: about $37.

Thermal management is easy. Passive cooling with the Argon ONE case keeps the SoC at 50-55°C under load. Active cooling isn't necessary. If you skip the case and use just a bare Pi with a heatsink, the SoC climbs to 65-70°C — still safe but stressed.

Backup path: off-site with restic

For any NAS, on-site storage is not backup. Add off-site sync. Recommended path:

# On the Pi, install restic
sudo apt install restic

# Set up a Backblaze B2 bucket (~$0.006/GB/month) or Storj DCS
# Bucket = your-nas-backup

# Nightly backup via cron
0 3 * * * restic -r b2:your-nas-backup:/pi backup /srv/dev-disk-by-uuid-xxx

For a 500 GB household NAS with typical churn, expect ~$3/month for Backblaze B2 storage. Cheap insurance.

Common gotchas

1. Cheap USB-to-SATA adapters silently fall back to bulk-only mode. If you see 40 MB/s SMB reads instead of 115, the adapter isn't doing UASP. Test with dmesg — should show USB Attached SCSI on connect.
2. microSD card wear. Boot on SD, but move OpenMediaVault's database and logs to SSD. Otherwise the SD card wears out in 12-18 months.
3. Undervoltage warnings. The Pi 4's 5V rail is sensitive. Cheap USB-C cables cause under-voltage detected! messages. Use the official PSU and a good cable.
4. SSD trim. Enable discard=async mount option or fstrim weekly. Without trim, USB SSDs slow down over time as the FTL fills.
5. SMB signing. Windows 11 defaults to SMB signing on. It costs ~15 MB/s throughput. Turn it off in Windows if security threat model allows, or leave on and accept the hit.
6. Nextcloud on Pi 4 is slow for large uploads. PHP-FPM struggles with 500 MB+ single files. Use the Nextcloud Desktop client sync (better) or WebDAV rather than the web UI for uploads.

When NOT to build this

• You need >4 TB of usable storage. SSDs are still expensive per TB. If you want 8+ TB, a Synology with WD Red HDDs beats the Pi on cost.
• You need real RAID. The Pi 4's two USB 3.0 ports aren't a four-drive appliance. Any real RAID needs a proper NAS chassis.
• You have a small office with 5+ concurrent users. The Pi 4 handles 2-3 concurrent SMB sessions well; beyond that it starts to bind.
• You want low-latency database hosting. The Pi 4's I/O is fine for file storage; databases with heavy random writes want a real server.

Comparison: Pi 4 8GB NAS vs Synology DS223j vs QNAP TS-233

For $250-380 you can buy either a Pi 4 NAS build or a small commercial NAS. The tradeoff table:

The Pi wins on price for SSD-only builds and on power draw. Synology and QNAP win on out-of-the-box polish and app support. If you value tinkering and configurability, buy the Pi. If you value "it just works" support, buy a commercial NAS.

Extending the Pi NAS: PoE and rack mount

The Pi 4 supports Power-over-Ethernet through the official PoE+ HAT ($24). Combined with a PoE switch, this eliminates the wall-wart PSU and consolidates power+network into one Cat 6 cable. Useful for closet installs.

For rack-mount, the Argon EON case fits in a shallow 1U rack. Not a full solution — you'd still need proper rack rails — but it's a step in that direction. For a proper mini-rack NAS, look at a Turing Pi 2 (multi-Pi cluster on a mini-ITX board) or a mini-ITX PC with better I/O.

Beyond storage: what else the Pi 4 8GB does simultaneously

The Pi 4 8GB has enough headroom to run a small home stack alongside NAS duties:

• Immich (photos) — 2 GB RAM at rest, spikes to 4 GB during machine learning re-index. Runs fine.
• Home Assistant — 512 MB RAM. Trivial.
• Pi-hole (DNS ad-blocking) — 100 MB RAM. Trivial.
• AdGuard Home (alternative to Pi-hole) — 150 MB RAM.
• VS Code Server for on-Pi editing — 400 MB RAM.
• A small MQTT broker for home automation — 50 MB RAM.

All of the above together fit in the 8 GB budget with 2-3 GB of headroom. The bottleneck if you run this stack isn't RAM — it's I/O contention if Immich is re-indexing while SMB is serving a large file. Schedule Immich re-index during off-peak hours.

Related coverage

• Build a Silent Home NAS on a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB With a SATA SSD — sibling article on the silent-build variant.
• Self-Hosting Immich on a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB — Immich configuration for the same board.
• Best SSD for a Big Steam Library — the Crucial BX500 review for the same SATA class.
• Raspberry Pi AI Module in 2026 — same board, different workload.

Sources

• Raspberry Pi 4 Model B official page for spec reference.
• OpenMediaVault project site for install and configuration docs.
• Crucial BX500 SSD product page for endurance and throughput specs.

Bottom line

For $250-380 in parts, a Raspberry Pi 4 8GB with two SATA SSDs and OpenMediaVault gives you a household file server that saturates a Gigabit LAN, sips 30 watts under load, and runs Immich + Nextcloud comfortably. If you already own a Pi 4 or can find one on sale, this is the cheapest way to a competent NAS in 2026.