TheWoo
Explorer
- Joined
- Jan 2, 2015
- Messages
- 58
I'm a FreeNAS NOOB, with virtually no PC knowledge (I'm on Macs since 1989), who’s currently running a Drobo 5N with Plex Server on it, but just learned that the reason why many videos won’t play on a Amazon Fire TV or Roku HD is that the ARM CPU inside the Drobo hasn’t enough power to do on-the-fly video transcoding.
So I decided to replace the Drobo with a custom-built FreeNAS. It should be noted that the system will NOT run 24/7, but will only be fired up when watching movies or when there’s a need to run a Timemachine backup of any of my Macs. Here’s the hardware I've ordered so far:
So I decided to replace the Drobo with a custom-built FreeNAS. It should be noted that the system will NOT run 24/7, but will only be fired up when watching movies or when there’s a need to run a Timemachine backup of any of my Macs. Here’s the hardware I've ordered so far:
- Fractal Design Node 304 Enclosure
- Asus Z87i-Pro Mini-ITX-Motherboard
- Intel Core i5-4460 3.2 GHz Quad Core CPU
- 1 pc. Crucial Ballistix 8GB DDR3 PC3-12800 DIMM Unbuffered NON-ECC CL 8-8-8-24 1.5V 1024Meg x 64 (as the Motherboard accepts NON-ECC only according to the specs and as the system won’t run 24/7 I don’t see the need for ECC). Option to add another 8 GB DIMM to increase to a total of 16 GB.
- Corsair CS550M Power Supply
- Alpenfoehn Brocken Eco CPU Fan
- 5 pcs. Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB Desktop HDD (already in use in Drobo)
- Hardware Selection OK?
Can anyone tell me if this configuration has enough power to run FreeNAS with Plex Server smoothly while doing 1080p on-the-fly transcoding?
- Boot device: SSD vs. USB Memory Stick
Does it make sense to use let’s say a 120 GB SSD instead of a 16 GB USB Stick as Boot device? Can FreeNAS be easily configured to make any use of the extra space, e.g. for caching?
- How to increase the RAID capacity once full?
On the Drobo LEDs next to the HDD slots will tell me which disk to replace, once the RAID is full and extra space is needed. One then swaps that drive for a bigger one and Drobo will automatically format it and reorganize the existing data.
How does this work under FreeNAS? Even if all drives are supposed to have the same size, can I swap the drives one after another, with waiting for rebuild/restructuring between each drive, and thus avoid backing up the complete data to a second NAS (with at least the same size)!?
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