I switched from Linux to Mac a few years back (this is not an article debating which one is better or anything like that, so don’t bother). I have some content on the linux machine that I would prefer to have it (but if I don’t have it immediately or worst case never, it’s not the end of the world). As time passed, I transferred some files but there are still a lot left. In the meanwhile my Linux box kind of died on me. One fine day it heated up and stopped booting. Then I bought a new fan and also a heatsink. This made the machine to boot up but in a few minutes it would enter into dangerously hot zone.
I bought Iomega’s iConnect to make my hard drives available on the network. Think of this as a poor-man’s NAS solution or non-technical user’s simple solution to sharing harddisks. I thought I could remove the hard-drive from the old Linux machine and make it shareable using iConnect. Unfortunately, there was one small problem. This machine was so old that I formatted it using reiserfs when that filesystem was very active and one of the best solutions. Given that people are moving/moved away from this filesystem I guess Iomega didn’t bother to include it in the firmare of iconnect. Mind you, iConnect actually uses Linux underneath. But given it’s a closed platform, I didn’t really fiddle around with it.
As a result of all that I had a spare external harddrive enclosure and a rusting linux box with a harddrive inside. Fast forward 3 yrs. Last year I heard about Raspberry Pi but didn’t really pay much attention. Then I came across some cool projects on Kickstarter using Raspberry Pi and that’s when I thought why not get a Raspberry Pi and liberate my old linux hard drive with Reiserfs.
I paid a total of $96.51 and got 6 components to put together a Raspberry Pi. I bought the following
1) Raspberry Pi, Model B ($43.30)
2) Raspberry Pi Case ($13.48). This is definitely expensive, once I get my 3D printer I will try to design something of my own and have fun. It’s expensive because, compare that to a soap box some of which sell for less than a buck and use similar amount of plastic.
3) Edimax EW-7811Un 150 Mbps Wireless 11n Nano Size USB Adapter ($10.87). I wanted to be able to put the RPi where ever I wanted in the home.
4) Motorola USB Wall Charger with Micro USB Data Cable ($6.14)
5) Transcend 16GB Class 10 SDHC Flash Memory Card ($14.05). I could have gone for a lower class and lower memory, but I think this is worth the investment.
6) Kootek Aluminum Heatsink set for Raspberry Pi ($5.99). They are smaller than they appear on the website. Injection molding and the cost of the material should get them < $2 in bulk, so they are relatively expensive but perhaps "Prime eligible" on Amazon makes them a bit more expensive. Also, at the moment I am not going to overclock. So not sure if these are really needed.
So all of this put together it cost $93.83 and along with tax it came to $96.51. What's interesting is all 6 the parts are from 5 different suppliers with Amazon providing the charger and the sd card while the rest from 3rd party sellers. But since they are all prime eligible, they got shipped in 2 days, all in one shipment! I was expecting to get a large box delivered and when I went home I found a small packet like the one Amazon uses to ship books. Yes, the form factor is really that small with Raspberry Pi and that's pretty cool.
Installing Raspberry Pi on a Mac in headless mode made it a bit difficult initially but it all worked out. My plan of being able to make my aging linux hard drive to work succeeded thanks to the Raspberry Pi.