NEXTCLOUD
Building a better file server with the Pi
Christian Cawley shows you how to get the most out of your Raspberry Pi-powered Nextcloud server.
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Christian Cawley Like Little Jack Horner, Christian Cawley has been playing with Raspberry Pi for years, even sticking in his thumb (drive) and pulling out a plum, and completely losing the allegory.
Running your own cloud storage server saves money, allows you to expand storage as necessary, and can be done with a device as small as a Raspberry Pi. Our previous guide to setting up a Nextcloud server on the Raspberry Pi (LXF280) covered everything you need to know about installing and setting up NextCloudPi and the Nextcloud Ubuntu Appliance, as well as the manual installation of Nextcloud on Raspberry Pi OS.
But with the software installed and connected to your network, the job is only half-done. You still need to configure it for your specific use-case, enable external storage to reduce wear and tear on the Pi’s SD card, and make the Nextcloud server accessible from beyond your home network.
The most straightforward way to set up external access to Nextcloud and to add external storage is to do it with the NextCloudPi installation.
External storage
The Raspberry Pi 3 and 4 boot from the SD card. While this can be changed in favour of a more reliable USB device, SD is the default option.