NAS (Network Attached Storage) is a widely used technology for sharing a storage volume across local network. There are lots of different ways to do it. In this post I am setting up a NAS on Raspberry Pi with a USB storage by using Samba.

Why Samba? Because it’s one of the best software to share a volume over network for different client types. We have Linux, MacOS, Windows, iPad OS, iOS, Android at home and we need all of them to be able to attach this volume without any additional software installation.

On a freshly installed Raspberry Pi, let’s start with the usual:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

Install Samba

sudo apt install samba

Format the USB Disk

Plug in the USB drive to the Raspberry Pi. To identify the USB drive:

lsblk

Look for the drive name (e.g., /dev/sda or /dev/sdb). In my case /dev/sda1

Format the drive to a Linux-friendly file system (e.g., ext4):

This will delete everything on the USB disk.

sudo mkfs.ext4 /dev/sda1

After confirmation, just wait for it to finish formatting, it can take a while:

Create a mount point for the drive under /mnt with any name you wish:

sudo mkdir -p /mnt/homepi-smb

Configure Auto-Mount with fstab

Get the UUID of the drive:

sudo blkid

Find the line for your USB drive and note its UUID (in my case, UUID=”d038d146-10ec-42f7-a147-9d0e6e2cda84″).

Edit the fstab file:

sudo nano /etc/fstab

Add the following line to auto-mount the drive on boot. Obviously don’t forget to replace the UUID with your disk’s UUID and the mount point as the mount point you created earlier:

UUID=d038d146-10ec-42f7-a147-9d0e6e2cda84 /mnt/homepi-smb ext4 defaults,nofail,x-systemd.device-timeout=10 0 2

The nofail option ensures the system boots even if the drive is missing. The x-systemd.device-timeout sets a 10-second wait for the drive.

Test the fstab changes:

sudo mount -a

Reload the systemd state as below if asks:

At the end, if there is no output for mount -a it means that all mounted fine.

Ensure the mount works after a reboot:

sudo reboot

If everything look OK as below, proceed to the next steps.

Set Permissions for the USB Drive

Set a user (in my case, cb) to own the shared folder:

sudo useradd -m -s /bin/bash cb

Set a password for the Samba user:

sudo smbpasswd -a cb

Change ownership and permissions of the drive:

sudo chown -R cb:cb /mnt/homepi-smb
sudo chmod -R 775 /mnt/homepi-smb

Now the directory is owned by the newly created user:

Configure Samba

Open the Samba configuration file:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Add the following share configuration at the bottom:

[homepi-smb]
comment = My shared network storage
path = /mnt/homepi-smb
browseable = yes
writable = yes
valid users = cb
create mask = 0664
directory mask = 0775
force user = cb

Test the Samba configuration:

sudo testparm

Restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

Connect to the Network Share

On a Windows PC:

• Open File Explorer.
• Enter the Raspberry Pi’s IP address in the format:
  • \\<Raspberry_Pi_IP>\homepi-smb
• Enter the Samba username (cb) and password.

On a Linux PC:
Use a file manager and enter

smb://<Raspberry_Pi_IP>/homepi-smb

Have fun!