Is FreeNAS for me

[FreeNAS_For_Me]

Hello, I come to FreeNAS with 25 odd years experience in Windows - I was an MCSE when it meant something, and I'm wondering if FreeNAS is for me as an alternative to buying a home NAS in a box.

The storage will hold video's to be streamed via the Blu-ray player, win-pc's and android mobiles; Music to be streamed via the AV Amp, win-pc's and android. I expect it to hold the photo's once I've scanned the negatives in and that's about it. No external web presence and I can't think why I'll want an internal web page. It will just be myself and my daughter making use of this.

The hardware is a lynnfield processor with 8GB of non-ecc memory . Yes I've read the guide by cyberjock regarding zvolumes. Backups of the data on the NAS will be Blu-ray discs, or acceptable if it fails, for example the music almost all came from CD.

I've played with this for a bit on a VM and after comparing FreeNAS to what I can get from a simple WinOS PC with a couple of file shares, well, I'm certainly not going to buy a NAS in a box.

Is FreeNAS for me?

 

[INCSlayer]

The hardware is a lynnfield processor with 8GB of non-ecc memory .

Is FreeNAS for me?

with that statement no it is not

 

[FreeNAS_For_Me]

8GB of ECC memory is about £55. An acceptable alternative to the £300+ I was possibly going to pay just for the discless NAS in a box. I will also need an intel NIC regardless of OS at about £30. The reason for mentioning the lynnfield chipset is it was the first with PCH so allows firmware based (or fake raid) 1+0.

 

[INCSlayer]

which is not important because you would not run it in raid mode you would run it in AHCI mode the less interference between the disks and the OS the better and any raid that isnt handled by freenas itself will just interfere

I suggest you read the manual:
http://doc.freenas.org/9.3/freenas.html

 

[gpsguy]

Since you were a "MCSE when it meant something", I suggest you get a copy of Server 2012 R2 and stay with Windows. Since you don't seem to want to buy proper hardware for FreeNAS, you'll probably be better off with Windows.

I'm probably older than you are, but as an old dog, I've learned new tricks.

 

[cyberjock]

I tend to agree with the others.. if you are a pro at Windows and aren't looking to do things properly with FreeNAS, I'd stick to what you know. While you surely are considering your data with your choice, the reality is that the variables that are added by going with hardware that isn't recommend and using an OS you aren't familiar with makes things a grey area.