Hi there! Chia newbie here 
I started plotting and farming with a win 10 full node connected via usb 3.0 to a qnap tr-400 in jbod mode as u can see in photo.
today I got back from another prj an rpi4 with 4 GB RAM and I want to add to my network to run as harvester. it runs ubuntu 20.04.4 and I have already installed the chia sw via cli. before moving forward with next steps I have a silly question: what if I do not want to connect via usb the disks to the rpi, and instead access the plots via cifs/smb shares?is there any best practice recommendation that I should follow or should I simply connect via usb the disks for performance concerns? theyāre already formatted w/ ntfs and storing plotsā¦
Thx in advance
Hi marquito,
Iām not sure what it is your are trying to do with the RPi.
Use it as a harvester: this would mean having the disks attached to it. Why then SMB instead of USB?
Most people using SMB -with mixed experience- do this because they have plots on a NAS which can not be directly attached to their full-node or harvester. What would be the advantage of SMB in your case?
You would still have to run the full-node on the PC?!? So what would be the advantage of using RPi in this setup?
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I agree with xkredr59. running your RPI as harvester is totally fine. But I dont see the reason why to use SMB shares. At this point you could remove the raspi alltogether and mount the shares to your main machine.
Hi guys! And thanks for the reply!
Iām just a newbie takinā confidence, sorry for the confused question 
For the configuration steps, I am referring to chiaās github article āHow to harvest on other machines that are not your main machineā or āFarming on many machinesā.
In the mentioned article, i cannot see any setup steps asking to direct attach the storage to the harvester or to use smb share; instead the harvester will connect to the farmer (main node)via TLS.
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That tutorial is not mentioning storage attachment.
You can connect it more or less however you want. If you are experimenting, go ahead, set up a farmer, connect a raspi as harvester and attach storage to the raspi. It will work.
It is just not efficient to have a main machine without storage + harvester with storage. You can as well connect the storage to the main machine, making the Raspi harvester obsolete. That is, unless your main machine cant handle more storage.
One exception would be if you have multiple harvesters with a lot of storage (as shown in your screenshot).
then it makes sense imho to use a separate main machine and multiple harvesters.
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Ah yes, that is a bit short story.
But the function of a harvester is to harvestā¦ searching for proofs in .plot files, on disks attached to that harvester.
In theory the harvester could mount (SBM/NFS) shares on a NAS to get to those .plot files but if you have your plots on direct storage such as SATA/SAS or USB connected disks the performance is much better/stable and preffered.
For your currenct configuration I would stick to just a full node, either on the pc or on the RPi, with the TR-004 or any other disks attached by USB.
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Fully Agree.
If you have a full node pc already, I would use that as full node rather than using the raspi as full node because the raspies seem to reach their performance limit as full node recently.
The raspies are totally fine as harvesters.
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thanks again guys, now the things are more clear!
you both deserve a beer from me, and to win lots of blocks! for the moment I will poweroff the rpi and keep plotting and farming with my full node.
once I will have a sufficient number of plotted drives, I will evaluate the need to attach them to the raspi with the goal to be more energy-efficient
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ahh so thatās something different. You may find your farmer out of cpu ressources from plotting. Configure process priority if thats the case or assign 1-2 cores specifically for the chia client and the rest for plottingā¦ Or harvest with the raspi if you encounter issues.
I am plotting directly on my harvesters with process priority set without any issue.
thank you for the beer though 
cheers
Beer and blocks, sounds good 
I also started out with QNAP TR-004/002ās but later on realized those are maybe too advanced/expensive as you (well, I did) use them only as āsingle diskā USB enclosures, not using the JBOD/RAID facilities.
So maybe as a tip for future expansion I would take a look at FANTEC QB-35US3-6G boxes at ~half the price.
Donāt know of course where you are but I got mine from Amazon.
Also 4-bay, a more serious powerbrick than the QNAP and better cooling of the HDDās so Iām happy with them.
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ohh yes, pls see my current status (plotting time)
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yay, beer 'n blocks will be a great combo 
got my qnap from ebay for 200 euros including shipping
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