Raspberry Pi5 powered small Network Attached Storage (NAS) enclosure

This project is for a 3D printed enclosure for a Network Attached Storage (NAS) device that uses a Raspberry Pi 5 using the Bookworm OS with two USB drives and running the stable v7 version of the openmediavault software.

The enclosure, which uses a build/print approach first developed for this previous design and used again for this larger NAS design, allows each ‘wall’ of the box to be printed separately and flat, which makes the print process more reliable. 

This design is called a ‘small’ enclosure as its aim has been to make the smallest possible ‘box’ to enclose a fan cooled Raspberry Pi 5 and two USB drives, with options to fit: ‘panel’ connectors in one wall for the power supply and ethernet cables; and a small 128x64 pixel OLED in another wall to continuously display operational ‘stats’.  The OLED option uses a ‘carrier’ inserted into the wall which is in two versions to suit the two commonly available 128x64 pixel OLEDs that are either 27.3 mm wide x 27.8mm high, or 24.7mm wide and 27.0mm high. The enclosure is just 150mm wide x 100mm deep x 86mm high.

The significant advantage of using a Raspberry Pi 5 is its enhanced power management for the USB ports, which safely supports the power requirements of two USB drives connected to its fast USB ports and at least another simple USB ‘stick’ connected to one of the slower USB ports. The Raspberry Pi 5 is held in place on the base with 6mm M2 self tap flanged pan head screws and is fitted with the Pi5's standard Active Cooler accessory for automatic thermal management.

The enclosure's main walls are bolted together with 16mm long M3 pan head screws engaging with M3 nuts that are ‘pulled’ into the hex openings on the corner blocks. 6mm M2 self tap flanged pan head screws are used to attach the two end walls and for the additional fixing points in the middle of the front and back walls. 4mm M3 pan head screws are used to attach the drive rails to the walls, the OLED inserts to the back wall and the connector panel to the front wall. 6mm M3 pan head screws are used to attached the SD opening bar to the base.

Various USB drives were experimented with during the ‘exploration’ of the openmediavault software and eventually a pair of existing ‘old’ Toshiba 1TB  and a Seagate 2TB drives were used in the final build, which used the Tosh_ext_drive_rail01.stl and Tosh_ext_drive_rail02.stl rails to ‘slot’ the drives in between the front and back walls. Other drive rail options/sizes may be needed for different sized USB drives but the design allows flexibility to fit different sized rails.

It should be noted that use of Seagate Expansion Portable, 4TB, External Hard Drive, 2.5 Inch, USB 3.0 drives had to be abandoned because a software configuration could not be found to make the drives spin-down when not used for a period of time.

Finally self adhesive feet are used to raise the assembled case above the surface to allow cool air to flow in from beneath the case as well from the end wall where the fan is mounted.

More detail on the usage context is available from this link.

All the components use 1.75mm PLA and a layer height of 0.15mm with print details for each component produced on an i3 Mk3 shown in the table below.