My freenas compatibility issues?

[angry aussie]

Hello,
I am new to FreeNAS.
I have decided, as I have 2 SATA HDD's lying around at home, to make a school project for computing, and make a home server.
I have a Dell Inspiron 1545, 2.00 GHz Intel Duo processor, 4GB RAM, 32-bit Vista, and a 750 and 250 GB HDD. (SATA) I also have a 1TB external hard drive.
(I'll run FreeNAS off a 8GB SD card)
My question is: Can I use the Dell as the NASBOX, and use this product to connect the two SATA HDD's :

http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=22598

The laptop only has one HDD slot, and 3 USB 2.0 drive slots.
That is the only option, as I live in Australia (No newegg) and I've had bad experiences with eBay.
The HDD station says its compatible with Windows and Mac, so would FreeNAS work with it too?
FreeNAS is supposed to detect drivers automatically from my understanding, so will it be able to use the station?
Also, I am able to access my server over wireless LAN right?

Thanks, I'm sure I'll have more questions.
Jake

 

[tingo]

You link doesn't work ...

 

[angry aussie]

Ahh sorry... Here's the link:
http://www.pccasegear.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=22598

 

[cyberjock]

Sigh.. this was JUST asked last week. Using laptops is not a good choice. They are typically proprietary and not friendly with FreeBSD.

Additionally, they are not expandable. USB/Firewire for hard drives is a bad idea for multiple reasons. If you want more information, you should go find that thread. I explained it all in nasty detail plenty of times and I really don't feel like hashing it out again.

If you already own the laptop and just want to see how FreeNAS works, how file permissions works, etc. and you plan to use the internal hard drive only(aka no ZFS redundancy or ZFS self-healing) then all you have to lose is trying it. But what you're considering is really not smart if you value your data.

 

[gpsguy]

Please don't create duplicate message threads.

First of all, I'm not sure whether the NIC in your laptop is supported. You'd want to use a wired network connection for FreeNAS.

Second, while the "HDD station" would probably work with FreeNAS, it's a bad idea and not recommended. All to often, user's have lost data, due to accidental disconnections, etc. Plus, USB 2.0 is slow, compared to SATA.

Do you have any friends that have recent vintage (less than 3 years old) desktop, full of viruses? They might be willing to give it to you for free or next to nothing. A desktop with 8Gb of RAM would be a better choice for a FreeNAS platform.