The Pi 5-50-5 Vault

This is a reliable, high‑capacity storage and media‑automation platform for the homelab. Built on a Raspberry Pi 5 with a 50 TB RAID5 array, it delivers fast, durable storage over Samba and runs the full arr automation suite (Sonarr, Radarr, Prowlarr, qBittorrent‑nox, NZBGet). The system is engineered for stability, repeatability, and hands‑off daily operation.

Key attributes

Platform: Raspberry Pi 5 (ARM64)
Storage: 5 × 10 TB SATA drives in mdadm RAID5 (36.38 TiB usable)
Filesystem: ext4 with stripe alignment (stripe=384) and noatime
Services: Native systemd services (no Docker) installed via PiJarr and manual installs
Share: Single Samba share Cornucopia (/media/plutus) with force user = plutus and ACLs
Goal: reproducible, monitored, and documented storage + media automation node

Hardware and Physical Architecture

Hardware inventory

Compute: Raspberry Pi 5 (aarch64)
SATA HAT: Radaxa SATA HAT (native SATA lanes, over PCIe x2.0 Lane - no USB bridges)
Drives: 5 × 10 TB HDDs (presented as /dev/sda … /dev/sde)
Enclosure: 3D‑printed mini‑rack for airflow and cable management
Network: VLAN segmented; node on trusted internal VLAN; NGINX gateway handles TLS termination

Physical considerations

Power: DC12v-120w/10A PSU for Pi + SATA HAT + drives; use UPS for graceful shutdowns Link
Cooling: Dual 200mm PWM fans in enclosed; drive temps monitored via SMART Link
Cabling: SATA cables to HAT; avoid USB‑SATA bridges to prevent disconnects and UAS quirks. Link