New to FreeNAS have a few questions

[David-A-M]

Hi all, I am new to this thing of freenas, the reason I ended up here is, I was looking for a way to store my family pictures and movies and be able to see them from different computers around the house, also for automatic backup from said computers, so the best answer out there was to use an old PC with FreeNAS, the idea sounds wonderful but I am not experienced with this type of thing so I need to ask a few questiond regarding the system, I hope you can help me.

1. I am only thinking of using one hard drive, 1.5TB, I dont have that many files, mostly pictures and videos, maybe 500gb total, more will be added in the future I am sure, so... can one single drive be used with FreeNas? most tutorials out there show 3 or more HDDs.

2. once one drive is used and everything is setup and running, can the files in the hard drive that are stored using Freenas be accessed directly from the hard drive?, by that I mean, if for some reason Freenas quits working, can I simply pull the drive out and connected to a computer as an external drive and access/recover my files? assuming that the drive is good and freenas had a problem. This here question is perhaps the most important.

3. Can the PC running freenas be turned off while not being used, for example only be ON and running on weekends for access and backup and OFF the rest of the week? will turning on/off mess up the settings or anything like that?

Those are just a couple of questions, I am sure more will pop up as I start to work on this, in advance thank you and hope to get some answers soon so I can get moving on this... Thanks

 

[Yatti420]

Yes to #1 and #3 all those questions.. It depends on what you want to do.. Even with your requirements I would be looking at something similiar to what I have.. Maybe with less hard drives.. You can run a single hard drive but you will have no redundancy and isn't advisable.. I would buy a second (same model) 1.5tb drive and mirror it at minimum..

#2 ZFS is supported via FreeBSD and some other OS.. Linux OS will need some manual work - I wouldn't attempt to access a pool through it.. I haven't looked at it in along time.. You won't have to worry about FreeNAS having problems.. Even if the USB dies you just re-load the config on a brand new USB and all is well..

Just remember to use ECC ram and a decent power supply..

http://forums.freenas.org/threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/

 

[David-A-M]

Thanks for the quick reply, I am not interested in buying a second drive, number one, most of my files will have copies on other HDDs on other PCs, so the main purpose for the NAS system will be to allow access to multiple computers within the network... Second, about question number 2, by re-loading the config on a new USB drive, I wasn't sure it that would re-erase everything on the HDD being that this would be a re-installation of the FreeNAS itself, so, if it is that easy then great, I would just re-load the FreeNAS on to a new drive and re-cover my files that way... Now about the ECC memory, I am not sure what that would be or why that would be so I will make it very simple, the tutorials out there suggest turning an old PC into a NAS so I am thinking of using an old complete computer "AS IS" original, without having to replace the power supply, memory or anything... The specs of the PC are in the link and it is an Acer Aspire 380 desktop. do you think that be good enough? now remember this isnt a build for a large corporation or anything, first time casual home user just trying to be able to access files from different computers....

http://www.cnet.com/products/acer-a...-4200-plus-2-2-ghz-monitor-none-series/specs/


Oh, before I forget, when turning the PC on/off will the IP address change? how do I go find it again? does it just show up on my network with whatever new IP address or how do I lock the IP address so it always keeps the same IP even during on/off cycles?

I am very excited already, thanks a lot :)

 

[pirateghost]

Those tutorials are horrible. The documentation for FreeNAS covers hardware requirements for a reason.

As for your question regarding the IP address. You can statically assign it an IP address so that it never changes. Honestly, based on your requirements and refusal to adhere to the recommendations, you should think about sticking to Windows as your NAS OS

Sent from my Nexus 5

 

[David-A-M]

thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

You might be more interested in the western digital all in one nas solutions