Will FreeNAS 8 run OK on my older FreeNAS 7 system?

[electricd7]

Hello,

I am considering upgrading (finally) from FreeNAS 7 to FreeNAS 8.2RC1. I am wondering if it will function OK as a home NAS used primarily to stream movies to my XBMC machines and for archival storage of pictures and files. Here is what I have in my current system:

Intel D945GT Motherboard (2.5GB memory and 3000Mhz P4 processor)
4GB compact flash to IDE adapter for boot volume
(4) 2TB Seagate HDD (SATA)
(2) 1TB Seagate HDD (SATA) attached to Rosewill SATA card
Intel Gigabit server adapter

Its a real basic system and I know that it doesn't have as much memory as recommended, but will it work OK just for home, or is it really necessary to have a ton of memory? I am not opposed to upgrading the mobo/cpu/memory to something more modern, but don't want to make the leap if its not really necessary. Thanks a ton in advance!

ED7

 

[ProtoSD]

You didn't mention how your drives were formatted/configured. If you plan to use UFS, you should be fine, but if you can possibly add more RAM it would help. Are you using the built in hardware RAID?

 

[electricd7]

My current 2TB drives are setup in a ZFS pool on freenas7 and my 1TB drives are in software raid1 set. I would like to run ZFS on the new setup and can go as much as 4GB of RAM on the motherboard. I haven't had very good luck with the onboard RAID features in most motherboards so I would really like to use the ZFS pool within FreeNAS to set this all up. How do I know if I have a 64bit system or 32bit? I am pretty sure the motherboard supports 64bit, but I am unsure how to tell for sure.

 

[ProtoSD]

I'm familiar with your board, it's 64 bit. I'm not sure if you'll be able to import your raid1 set. If you can bump your RAM to 4GB you should be fine. I know what you mean about onboard RAID being unreliable. I support a client with that board and they have mirroring setup and it's been extremely reialble, but you should let ZFS handle your RAID anyway.