Setting up drives to transfer data from one machine to another

[Mike Guilmette]

Hello all. I was curious how I would setup a 2 drive "transfer station" to transfer data from one mac to another. It would only be a temporary pool while I have two unused drives in my NAS. Research has told me that RAID 0 would likely be the best setup. What is the best method for setting it the share settings in FreeNAS so that the Mac's see it as a network drive that I can dump files to? Any help would be appreciated!

 

[Chris Moore]

RAID 0

Provides no protection for your data. I understand it is temporary, I just want to ensure that you are fully apprised of the risk. If there is a problem with either of the drives, you could loose all the data on both drives.
Links to resources about FreeNAS and ZFS:

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Here is a link to a setup guide:

Uncle Fester's Basic FreeNAS Configuration Guide
https://www.familybrown.org/dokuwiki/doku.php?id=fester:intro

 

[Mike Guilmette]

Well aware of the risks. I was thinking of this: copying from source to NAS then move from NAS to target. Then verify data has made it. Unless there is a faster/better way of moving it from source to target. I suppose I could cut out the middleman and run an ethernet cable between the two of them. Practical and efficient but cumbersome and doesnt use the NAS. All that horsepower and no driver.

Kind of just want to do it to gain more familiarity and troubleshooting practice.

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[Chris Moore]

Kind of just want to do it to gain more familiarity and troubleshooting practice.

Probably the fastest way to transfer the data would be directly from one laptop to the other, but that is going to require that you setup a share on one of the laptops so that you can remotely access the data from the other laptop, but the connectivity can still traverse the network switch.

 

[Mike Guilmette]

Probably the fastest way to transfer the data would be directly from one laptop to the other, but that is going to require that you setup a share on one of the laptops so that you can remotely access the data from the other laptop, but the connectivity can still traverse the network switch.

Still bypasses the NAS if I do it that way. Ok if that would be the fastest most reliable way then I will do it that way. I just wanted to incorporate the NAS because at the moment its largely unused and I wanted to get some more experience with it before data integrity became too critical. I do thank you for your input. And if you have anything else to share with this novice I greatly appreciate it.

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[Chris Moore]

Ok if that would be the fastest most reliable way then I will do it that way.

It has the data going from one system to the next. Just one copy. If you go to the NAS, you have to copy it once, to the NAS, then copy it a second time, to the second computer. Copying all the data twice makes it take twice as long. If you NEED to go to the NAS, certainly do that, but if you can bypass that step, the overall process will be faster. I am sure there is a way to share a directory on one laptop so the other laptop can copy the files you need to copy.

 

[Mike Guilmette]

Yea it doesn't NEED to go through the NAS. Just wanted to experiment with different things

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[Chris Moore]

Yea it doesn't NEED to go through the NAS. Just wanted to experiment with different things

If you want to do it, it is certainly an interesting experiment. Take a look at the link I shared to, "Uncle Fester's Basic FreeNAS Configuration Guide"
If I recall correctly, there is a section on creating a share for AFP (the Apple specific protocol) but you might want to setup a little (internal) FTP server. Also, check the FreeNAS documentation because many of the questions are answered in there.

 

[Mike Guilmette]

If you want to do it, it is certainly an interesting experiment. Take a look at the link I shared to, "Uncle Fester's Basic FreeNAS Configuration Guide"
If I recall correctly, there is a section on creating a share for AFP (the Apple specific protocol) but you might want to setup a little (internal) FTP server. Also, check the FreeNAS documentation because many of the questions are answered in there.

Will do. Any chance I have of trying something new with this and I'm all over it.
I will have to look at how to figure out and capture the speed of transfers. I'm sure thats on the forum some where so I will look around for it. Thank you for the insight.

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[Chris Moore]

Probably the fastest way to go, and use FreeNAS, is with FTP.

http://doc.freenas.org/11/services.html#ftp

 

[Mike Guilmette]

So as it turns out that I had to transfer files from a Macbook Air to a 2015 Macbook. Because Apple decided that they want ridiculously thin and light laptops over everything else, the Macbook ONLY has a usb type c port. Without having a hub to connect it I was sort of forced to use the NAS to transfer files.

So what I did was use my 2 6tb drives in mirror, created a new volume and dataset on them, and created a new apple share. I then created a user account to access that share. Once that was done I had to have the Macs see the share so I went to [Finder>click on "go" on menu bar> connect to server> type in "afs://(ip address of freenas)>log in with the new user credentials] and that was it. Did that on both macs and was then able to upload the files from the MBA to the NAS then to the MB.

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[danb35]

Well, lots of people like their laptops to be thin and light. Apple accommodates them.

Your solution obviously worked for you, as I'd expect it would have. The only change I'd have made would be to set up a Windows share, since AFP's being deprecated and MacOS supports SMB quite well.

 

[Mike Guilmette]

I will have to test that out. Thanks for the suggestion!

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