noob looking for help

[HeyDee]

I have an old box I'm hoping to re-purpose ; an Intel Core2Quad chip and four GB ram. I have used XP since I built it WAAAAYY back and added a PCI card to handle more hard disks ( total of 6 in the box now...2 on MoBo, 4 through PCI, all different sizes from 1 to 3 TB). When a disk gets full I hot swap, then use the full one on a dock if I need to see the old stuff.....but, I have HDs all over the place, and want to centralize the box as JBOD for my growing Lightroom Archive. I bought a 8GB thumb drive to boot from, attached it to the box, and now....here I sit. I downloaded the recommended Win32Diskimager and 7zip ( as well as the 32 bit FreeNAS software) to get the ball rolling, but am stuck. several questions though before I really make a mess....

1. is there any danger of data loss on the HDs in the stack? I will , of course, be writing to the Thumb Drive...

2. Should I disconnect all drives except the present OS drive ( for interface while I install the freeNAS) and then re-attach the drives once the web interface is up? CAN I re-attach the drives onto the FreeNAS interface? especially through the PCI card....

3. As my machine is presently running XP ( a 32 bit system...) CAN I use the 64 bit download?

4.Since I will ALWAYS use this as JBOD, do I really need the ZFS interface?

5. My business is all still images right now, but I will be doing more DSLR video archiving soon, and want to be able to offer the large files to other workstations as I hire editors...
6.This box is the only machine running a windows product in my office, and I have had no issues using built-in file sharing to store/write things to ALL drives from our Macs...FreeNAS will actually improve my experience, won't it?

Friends....I thank anyone...ANYONE...in advance for answering these questions and offering insight as to where I should be....I was just under the impression that adding a JBOD box to a network was far simpler than all this....and if I am able to do it with present hardware, well....YAY ME!

 

[FritVetBE]

Hey there HeyDee

So if i understand correctly, you just would like to have a centrol storage on you network, with the hardware you already have (older hardware, disks of different sizes,...) ?
And this will also be used in a (small) company in production environment?

My first note ==> don't use old hardware then!

I'm not going to answer all question, because i think there are other people around who can give much more precise information, though i would like to help you out! ;-)

So here it goes:
1. is there any danger of data loss on the HDs in the stack? I will , of course, be writing to the Thumb Drive...

I assume this is during the creation of the bootable USB stick? Then no, you specify in the software the destination device (which would be your USB stick).
Once you will create a volume in FreeNAS, the existing data on the disks will be removed.
So what you would have to do is to copy data from your computer to the freenas box.

2. Should I disconnect all drives except the present OS drive ( for interface while I install the freeNAS) and then re-attach the drives once the web interface is up? CAN I re-attach the drives onto the FreeNAS interface? especially through the PCI card....

As good as i can remember, it is not necessary to disconnect the disks, since the image is already on the USB.
What you should do is to plug in the USB, boot your machine from that USB and then you'll be able to start the initial configuration of FreeNAS.
Via the webinterface, you can view all the attached disks (if the hardware -PCI card- is supported ofcourse!)

3. As my machine is presently running XP ( a 32 bit system...) CAN I use the 64 bit download?
You can run a 64 bit operating system on your machine if it contains a 64 bit compatible processor (intel core2Quad will definately support 64bit).

4.Since I will ALWAYS use this as JBOD, do I really need the ZFS interface?
I leave this one open for someone else with more insight.

6.This box is the only machine running a windows product in my office, and I have had no issues using built-in file sharing to store/write things to ALL drives from our Macs...FreeNAS will actually improve my experience, won't it?
FreeNAS performance is ofcourse dependant of the hardware in your FreeNAS box. I think buying new disks and going for raidz-2 will be a much more improvement, giving you a layer of redundancy (you can loose 1 disk, the pool will keep working).

EDIT: Maybe you should try freenas in a virtual environment first to see what is possible and what not, create virtual disks with different sizes,... so that you can, somewhat, reproduce your setup ;-)

Best regads
Gert

 

[marian78]

hi, im not expert....
1. yes. you dont use ecc ram, you use old used hardware
2. freenas is instaling to usb drive not hdd drive, if you install freenas, you need zfs disks (Windows XP = NTFS or FAT32 == first, migrate (double copy) all your data to another storages, than create your freenas box and than copy back data to freenas box)
3. core2duo is x64 compatibil
4. yes. i thing if you worry about data loss, look at some HP microservers N54L or N40L, or N36L (ebay, nsert 8G RAM UNBUFFERED ECC, set disks minimal to RAIDZ1 or better to RAIDZ2) or something bigger. Your old PC use for backup and testing.

maybe you can star look at
http://doc.freenas.org/index.php/Hardware_Recommendations
or
http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/


Marian

PS: sorry for my english.

 

[Ericloewe]

I have an old box I'm hoping to re-purpose ; an Intel Core2Quad chip and four GB ram. I have used XP since I built it WAAAAYY back and added a PCI card to handle more hard disks ( total of 6 in the box now...2 on MoBo, 4 through PCI, all different sizes from 1 to 3 TB). When a disk gets full I hot swap, then use the full one on a dock if I need to see the old stuff.....but, I have HDs all over the place, and want to centralize the box as JBOD for my growing Lightroom Archive. I bought a 8GB thumb drive to boot from, attached it to the box, and now....here I sit. I downloaded the recommended Win32Diskimager and 7zip ( as well as the 32 bit FreeNAS software) to get the ball rolling, but am stuck. several questions though before I really make a mess....

1. is there any danger of data loss on the HDs in the stack? I will , of course, be writing to the Thumb Drive...

2. Should I disconnect all drives except the present OS drive ( for interface while I install the freeNAS) and then re-attach the drives once the web interface is up? CAN I re-attach the drives onto the FreeNAS interface? especially through the PCI card....

3. As my machine is presently running XP ( a 32 bit system...) CAN I use the 64 bit download?

4.Since I will ALWAYS use this as JBOD, do I really need the ZFS interface?

5. My business is all still images right now, but I will be doing more DSLR video archiving soon, and want to be able to offer the large files to other workstations as I hire editors...
6.This box is the only machine running a windows product in my office, and I have had no issues using built-in file sharing to store/write things to ALL drives from our Macs...FreeNAS will actually improve my experience, won't it?

Friends....I thank anyone...ANYONE...in advance for answering these questions and offering insight as to where I should be....I was just under the impression that adding a JBOD box to a network was far simpler than all this....and if I am able to do it with present hardware, well....YAY ME!

First of all, read all these:


http://forums.freenas.org/index.php...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/

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

I will add that your current configuration is woefully inadequate, especially for business applications.

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS has two options for disk format: UFS and ZFS. Support for UFS, however, is said to be going away in the next release. Therefore, if you plan to keep your software current (which you should do for security reasons), you need to plan that you'll be using ZFS.

There was a time when FreeNAS was designed to be just thrown on any old hardware, but that hasn't been the case for a couple of years now. If properly set up, it's a stable, reliable NAS solution, but it requires a fair bit of computing muscle.

 

[HeyDee]

Hey, Gert! thanks for the responses.....I'll take the "buy some new gear" response to the ol' thinking room for a bit.....I guess I know its inevitable....but, the way I spill money, I was just trying to avoid the start up costs of a new build. When I saw the costs of a 24TB rack ( 3K?! WHAAAA???!!!) I just felt like , for my uses, I would be able to get by with zero output on this....As for RAID, I guess I should say my rack has 12 TB actual as the whole setup is mirrored. Lightroom allows for two simultaneous ingests, so I use it....so far so good....never lost a picture. But as I see the way business is going, I will need a far more robust and simple way for folks to access the data pool....and that's my motivation. surely there's a pretty simple way to show 8 hard drives form a single, networked source....without buying a prebuilt, 8 slot NAS box at 3 thousand dollars....even this (http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Produ...8-125&ef_id=UlVZSwAAAZi8VD4O:20140708181811:s) is too much for me....

Still....I do thank you for reaching out! I'll await anyone else's input, too....come on!

 

[Ericloewe]

Hey, Gert! thanks for the responses.....I'll take the "buy some new gear" response to the ol' thinking room for a bit.....I guess I know its inevitable....but, the way I spill money, I was just trying to avoid the start up costs of a new build. When I saw the costs of a 24TB rack ( 3K?! WHAAAA???!!!) I just felt like , for my uses, I would be able to get by with zero output on this....As for RAID, I guess I should say my rack has 12 TB actual as the whole setup is mirrored. Lightroom allows for two simultaneous ingests, so I use it....so far so good....never lost a picture. But as I see the way business is going, I will need a far more robust and simple way for folks to access the data pool....and that's my motivation. surely there's a pretty simple way to show 8 hard drives form a single, networked source....without buying a prebuilt, 8 slot NAS box at 3 thousand dollars....even this (http://www.neweggbusiness.com/Product/Product.aspx?gclid=CjwKEAjwre6dBRC94d-Gma7g3wcSJACNatZekVi3zmdP7Ex6pmeYEzaJ4sWMUm7xFzk_pr20rTaVBhoCrAnw_wcB&Item=9B-22-108-125&nm_mc=KNC-GoogleBiz&cm_mmc=KNC-GoogleBiz-_-pla-_-Desktop NAS-_-9B-22-108-125&ef_id=UlVZSwAAAZi8VD4O:20140708181811:s) is too much for me....

Still....I do thank you for reaching out! I'll await anyone else's input, too....come on!

For 3k bucks you can easily get 32TB (along with the rest of the system, of course) by building it yourself.

 

[danb35]

Well, a FreeNAS Mini is $1k plus drives, and has space for four drives. With either mirrors or RAIDZ2, that would give you 8 TB net capacity (4 x 4 TB drives), but it does limit you to four drive bays. If you want the server to be rack-mountable, that's going to drive up the cost. If you want hot-swap bays, that's going to drive up the cost. That said, I recently picked up a SuperMicro 2U 12-bay chassis off eBay for about $300 shipped, including redundant power supplies.

For 24 TB of net storage in a rack, I'd probably look at this setup:
SuperMicro CSE-826TQ-R800 chassis (I bought mine here: http://www.ebay.com/itm/330972489350?ssPageName=STRK:MEWNX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1497.l2649) - 12 bays, redundant 800-watt power supplies
SuperMicro X10SL7-F-O motherboard (http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...3182821&cm_re=x10sl7-f-_-13-182-821-_-Product)
16 or 32 GB ECC RAM (around $150 for 16 GB, $300 for 32 GB)
CPU at your discretion, probably a Xeon E3 ($250+ depending on the model)
8 x 4 TB WD Red drives

I'm getting about $1750 plus CPU and RAM for this setup, and almost all of that is in the drives. This is planning for a RAIDZ2 configuration, which means your storage pool will tolerate the failure of up to two drives without loss of data. Of course, you can re-use your existing drives, but you'll need to make sure they're set up in a reasonable RAID configuration (e.g., you'll want to keep drives of the same or similar size grouped together).