Build Suggestions

[utamav]

I recently had a HDD crash on me. It was connected to my router which I was using as my NAS. Although most of the data was copied to another drive, I did lose some recent pics. Hence my looking at a better solution with FreeNAS.

I have a i7 Lenovo laptop sitting idle. I have 1 4TB external drive and I plan to buy another one to replace the recently dead 3TB external drive. So I'll have 2 4TB external drives. My laptop has 4 ports (2 USB 3.0 and 2 USB 2.0). I also have a few 1TB/500GB portable external drives that I plan to connect to this laptop.

I want to run RAID 1 for the 2x 4TB. That way, if any one drive fails, I have complete backup on another drive. I plan to use the other smaller drives for backup of my phones/tablets and miscellaneous storage.

1. Is it possible to have RAID 1 on 2 drives only?
2. What would be best setup for the other 1TB/500GB drives?

Any other tips/suggestion/documentation that is recommended read before I start working on this setup? Any help is greatly appreciated.

 

[utamav]

I wanted to add:

I have 16GB of RAM on it and 1x 256GB SSD and 1x 1TB SHDD.

3. Would it be possible to use the internal 1TB HDD for backup as well?
4. Can I use a USB hub to attach more drives?

 

[BigDave]

Laptops are not configured properly to run a file server operating system!!! Please read the link below, Please!
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[nightshade00013]

There is a ton more than that to read as well. I would suggest going up to where it says resources at the top and start going through the introductory ones or click the ones I have in my signature line.

Suffice to say at the least:

Laptop -- NO
USB drives -- NO
SSHD -- NO
USB hub -- NO
i7 -- NO

You may be able to make it work but if you are worried about your data then you will not use hardware that does not meet the requirements. With FreeNAS you will be spending some hard earned money to meet the suggested requirements but the payoff is the ability to do a lot of things and have the ability to survive drive failures along with other hardware failures.

 

[Jailer]

Any other tips/suggestion/documentation that is recommended read before I start working on this setup?

Check the hardware guide at the top of this page in the resources section. You sound like you care about your data and if so the planned route you have currently is not the route you want to take.

 

[melloa]

i7 -- NO

Based on no ecc support, right?

 

[danb35]

Alternate suggestion: An HP Proliant ML10 for (today) $180, at least 4 GB more RAM (though I'd recommend another 8 GB, and more never hurts), and whatever drives you want to install. Stable, server-grade hardware that should keep your data nice and safe if you set it up properly. Agree with everyone else here that your proposed build just isn't a good idea.