New UFS/Multi-sized drive Setup

[Tricky Dick]

A LONG time ago I used to build computers so I have a few parts laying around the house. Haven’t been involved with it for a while so please pardon my terminology. When one of the external hard drives I was using to backup data crashed I came across FreeNAS and thought it would be a great way to put some of this old equipment to good use and create a better and more reliable backup system. But the more I read the more I think I may be barking up the wrong tree.

The motherboard I have is a Tyan S5101, even though it’s 10 years old it still seems like an amazing motherboard (ok, “amazing” may be too strong of a word and “seems” is the key word there). It has some limitations by today’s standards but it can still do a lot. It’s a P4, 478 socket so it’s limited to 32-bit. Most people say there’s no such thing as a 478 socket 64-bit, you’d have to at least go to a 775 socket to get 64-bit. But I have found a few 64-bit 478 socket processors out there (SL8JX, Step G1 for example), but even so, I would still be limited to 4GB of RAM. It has 4 SATA ports, two IDE ports (standard at the time), even a built in RAID controller. I may be mistaken here, but it appears that the RAID port can even be turned into an additional IDE port. I have 4 Promise SATA300 TX2 controller cards, each will allow me to add two IDE drives and two SATA drive. From what I’ve read this card will handle both at the same time. So, in theory, this system will handle up to 26 drives!

So, here’s what I have…
Super Tower case that has 6 external 5.25 bays, 2 external 3.5 bays and 4 internal 3.5 bays.
Tyan S5101 MB, w/P4 (Extreme Edition) 3.2Ghz (SL7AA) CPU, 4GB RAM.
2 200GB SATA Drives
1 250GB EIDE Drive
1 200GB EIDE Drive
3 80GB EIDE Drives
1 45GB EIDE Drive
I also have a few older “cable/DVR” boxes (COMCAST/DTV/DishNetwork) laying around that I could harvest the hard drive out of (not sure of the size and type).
Plus 3 more EIDE drives 5GB and under.

I know I’m limited to FreeNAS version 9.2.1.9 because of my 32-bit limitation and the UFS file system because of my 4GB RAM limitation. With all this equipment I REALLY don’t want to spend any money on this, so… am I on the right track here or am I wasting my time? What’s my best solution? It’s hard to find documentation on UFS and multiple sized drives.

 

[Nick2253]

Honestly, I think you are wasting your time with FreeNAS. FreeNAS is designed around ZFS, and the major reason to use FreeNAS is that it makes it very easy to manage ZFS storage. However, your setup is woefully inadequate for ZFS, so I wouldn't even try it.

In your shoes, and I had to use the above hardware to get a share working, I'd just install Ubuntu or CentOS, and set up Samba. There are a bunch of guides online to doing that.

However, if you let me do whatever you want, I'd throw all that hardware away, for more than one reason:

• First, your power draw for that setup will be terrible. In a couple years with new hardware, you'll save more in power cost than what the new hardware cost you.
  
• Second, the reliability of hardware that old is not going to be good. I mean 5GB IDE drives!? In general, IDE was superseded by SATA in 2003, which means most of those drives are probably 10+ years old. It's amazing that those drives are still working, but if you put them under a NAS load, especially with a parity RAID, they won't be working much longer.
  
• Lastly, your performance is horrible. A 3.2Ghz P4 has a Passmark score of 378. An Atom D525 has a passmark score of 698. A Pentium G3258 has a Passmark score of 3986 (over 10x your P4!), and most would consider the G3258 an entry level solution, especially for something like FreeNAS.

All-in-all, any time put into this system, in my opinion, is a waste of time. If you value your time, don't spend it on an outdated and unreliable system. If you're serious about getting some data redundancy on the cheap, buy a USB RAID enclosure (less than $100), put your two 200GB SATA drives in there, and you're done: 200GB of redundant storage, easy peasy. If you want more than that, buy a couple 1TB drives (~$50 apiece), and now you've got 1TB of redundant storage for under $200.

 

[SweetAndLow]

Honestly, I think you are wasting your time with FreeNAS. FreeNAS is designed around ZFS, and the major reason to use FreeNAS is that it makes it very easy to manage ZFS storage. However, your setup is woefully inadequate for ZFS, so I wouldn't even try it.

In your shoes, and I had to use the above hardware to get a share working, I'd just install Ubuntu or CentOS, and set up Samba. There are a bunch of guides online to doing that.

However, if you let me do whatever you want, I'd throw all that hardware away, for more than one reason:

• First, your power draw for that setup will be terrible. In a couple years with new hardware, you'll save more in power cost than what the new hardware cost you.
  
• Second, the reliability of hardware that old is not going to be good. I mean 5GB IDE drives!? In general, IDE was superseded by SATA in 2003, which means most of those drives are probably 10+ years old. It's amazing that those drives are still working, but if you put them under a NAS load, especially with a parity RAID, they won't be working much longer.
  
• Lastly, your performance is horrible. A 3.2Ghz P4 has a Passmark score of 378. An Atom D525 has a passmark score of 698. A Pentium G3258 has a Passmark score of 3986 (over 10x your P4!), and most would consider the G3258 an entry level solution, especially for something like FreeNAS.

All-in-all, any time put into this system, in my opinion, is a waste of time. If you value your time, don't spend it on an outdated and unreliable system. If you're serious about getting some data redundancy on the cheap, buy a USB RAID enclosure (less than $100), put your two 200GB SATA drives in there, and you're done: 200GB of redundant storage, easy peasy. If you want more than that, buy a couple 1TB drives (~$50 apiece), and now you've got 1TB of redundant storage for under $200.

+1

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

What’s my best solution?

If budget is the #1 consideration:

1. eBay all the old gear. The drives could fetch good prices if you're prepared to let them sit for the right buyer, i.e. a data recovery company.
2. Buy a Dell PowerEdge T20 for $179.
3. Add an 8GB stick of RAM, a USB stick for boot device, and a couple of NAS drives.
4. Install FreeNAS and set up a ZFS mirror.