For the past 5 years I have been using a FreeNAS 0.7.1 on a 3GHz Pentium 4 desktop with 2TB with UFS volumes for my home file storage. I've diligently kept backups of my most important data on external USB drives and burned to DVDs since the NAS data is vulnerable. This system has been serving me well, but is getting old and I'm in need of more storage.
I would like to make use of a legacy HP xw4400 workstation to build a new FreeNAS server. The server will be used to backup desktop and laptop files, but the main use would be as a media server for music (MP3 and uncompressed) and for movies (BDs and DVDs). Usage would be mostly media reads (by at most two clients at one time) and backup writes would occur in the middle of the night.
I'm planning on a three, 7200 rpm, 3TB HDDs in a RAID5 array for a usable 6TB. I would like to stick with a configuration that would give me good media read speeds.
The HP xw4400 has the following specs:
2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo E6430
4M Cache 1066 MHz FSB 64-bit
2 GB ECC memory
I know that current memory is somewhat low and I can increase it to 4GB or 8GB of non-ECC memory. However, memory for this motherboard seems to be somewhat difficult to find and is expensive. I don't want to spend a whole lot adding memory thus defeating the purpose of puting this legacy system to use.
Could this configuration produce a NAS that would suit my intended purpose?
Thanks for any feedback.
I would like to make use of a legacy HP xw4400 workstation to build a new FreeNAS server. The server will be used to backup desktop and laptop files, but the main use would be as a media server for music (MP3 and uncompressed) and for movies (BDs and DVDs). Usage would be mostly media reads (by at most two clients at one time) and backup writes would occur in the middle of the night.
I'm planning on a three, 7200 rpm, 3TB HDDs in a RAID5 array for a usable 6TB. I would like to stick with a configuration that would give me good media read speeds.
The HP xw4400 has the following specs:
2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo E6430
4M Cache 1066 MHz FSB 64-bit
2 GB ECC memory
I know that current memory is somewhat low and I can increase it to 4GB or 8GB of non-ECC memory. However, memory for this motherboard seems to be somewhat difficult to find and is expensive. I don't want to spend a whole lot adding memory thus defeating the purpose of puting this legacy system to use.
Could this configuration produce a NAS that would suit my intended purpose?
Thanks for any feedback.