Virtual ram?

[heiamoss nas]

Hi,

I'm new to freenas and I don't want to spend so much on the hardware just now. I have an old desktop (HP Compaq Business Desktop d530) with 512 MB ram, which is on the low side. The trouble is that the main board only supports two 184 pin ddr ram chips, and the largest I could find were 2GB each and very expensive. I know that there is some sort of virtual ram where you could use a (free) usb memory stick to extend your ram, can this be done in freenas as well?

New main board, CPU and memory will cost quite a lot, and it would be perfect if I could use my old horse as a nas...

Joachim

 

[Milhouse]

HP N40L Microservers are dirt cheap (£120 in the UK - dual-core Athlon, 2GB RAM [expandable to 8GB, about £50], 250GB disk, 200W PSU, 4 swappable drive bays, small, power efficient) and great for running FreeNAS.

I can understand where you are coming from in wanting to keep your old kit going, but sometimes it's just not worth it (the power consumption cost of older kit is also something to consider when weighing up the pros and cons of running a NAS 24x7).

As for using USB memory stick as extended RAM...no. You might be able to put swap on a memory stick, but performance would be horrific. The main reason for adding more RAM is so that FreeNAS can use it as a buffer to improve read and write performance, a USB memory stick won't help here in any shape or form.

 

[heiamoss nas]

Thank you for the tip and the honesty. I believe you are right, and I will check out that box.