How to Use Home Assistant as an NAS Server
If you use a Home Assistant server on a Raspberry Pi or old PC for home automation, you could also use the leftover space in the SD card or SSD for network-attached storage (NAS). You may also connect an external hard drive or SSD to your Raspberry Pi or old laptop running the supervised Home Assistant server and use that storage for the NAS. Here’s how to do it.
Prerequisites for a Home Assistant NAS Server
There are a couple of prerequisites for using Home Assistant for an NAS server:
If you are using a Raspberry Pi 4, you canmigrate the Home Assistant server from your SD card to an SSDto get more storage with much faster I/O performance. Make sure the SSD is large enough to be used as network storage (>=250GB). You must enable USB boot mode toboot Raspberry Pi via SSD. Once you have configured the SSD, follow the instructions below to set up a Samba NAS on the Home Assistant server.
If you are running the supervised Home Assistant installation on an Intel or AMD-based old computer or laptop, you cannot use the Samba NAS add-on as it’s only compatible with HASS OS. However, you can install theSamba add-onto build the NAS, assuming the machine has an SSD or hard drive with at least 250GB of storage. The only downside is that you can only access internal storage and cannot mount external storage with this add-on.
Install and Set Up Samba NAS Add-On in Home Assistant
On your Home Assistant, log in as the administrator and then follow these steps to install and configure the Samba NAS add-on.
Access NAS Storage
You can now access the Home Assistant NAS storage over the network on your Windows, macOS, Linux, iOS, or Android device.
To access the NAS from a Windows PC:
To access the NAS from a macOS machine:
Linux (Ubuntu)
To access the NAS from a Linux (Ubuntu) PC:
To access the NAS from a Samsung Android device:
On stock Android OS and other Android smartphones, you’re able to use the default file manager app if it supports network storage. Otherwise, you can install and use theMy Filesapp from Samsung and follow the instructions above to access the NAS on your Android smartphone.
To access the NAS from an iPhone or iPad:
If you want to connect external storage to your Home Assistant and use it as NAS storage, make sure it’s formatted as EXT3/EXT4.
Use Leftover Storage Effectively
The Samba NAS is a modified version of the original Samba add-on for HA that you could install on your supervised Home Assistant server running on Home Assistant OS and use the leftover storage on the server for storing data over the local network. With Samba NAS, you can add or mount external storage devices, such as a USB drive or external hard disk or SSD, and use the volumes for data storage.
If you can nail this DIY project, you may never have to pay for cloud storage again.
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