Is it okay if I install FreeNAS on an old netbook or am I wasting my time?

[DaDiRa]

I learned about FreeNAS from a how-to guide on howtogeek.com. I have no idea about servers in general, and I simply thought I should try it out and see how it goes. When I started reading the guide and visited your page to check the system requirements, I realised I'm not even close - not even my main computers meets them!
So I asked there, got an answer, but also wanted people's opinion on the official FreeNAS forum. As I mention on the topic, I've got an Acer Aspire One A0531h.

(I did search about similar topics before posting this, but didn't find anything relevant. Sorry in advance if there was another topic I could have posted this question)

 

[danb35]

That hardware will not be safe to use with FreeNAS. You could try NAS4Free, XPEnology, or one of the other NAS software distributions, but if you have less than 8 GB you should not attempt to use FreeNAS.

 

[cyberjock]

Basically.. its useless. The proprietary hardware in laptops makes things often a non-starter. Couple that with the fact that 99% of laptops purchased won't even have a NIC that is supported, and using USB drives for storage is a bad idea, and you're left with a box that likely had zero NICs supported and you have a single internal hard drive. Not going to be overly useful.

As Danb35 said, if you don't have 8GB of RAM, then the behavior of FreeNAS is going to be erratic too.

Would you want to learn how to use a new OS that is going to be borderline flaky at any moment? Makes it hard to determine if a problem is because you don't know what you are doing or if its because the hardware is incompatible/insufficient.

 

[DaDiRa]

That hardware will not be safe to use with FreeNAS. You could try NAS4Free, XPEnology, or one of the other NAS software distributions, but if you have less than 8 GB you should not attempt to use FreeNAS.

I'll search for these, thanks!