Free NAS

[ozzy214]

Anybody have any thoughts on it? Or is just easier to install winblows and map the drives on the network?

I have a dual core ddr3 xeon desktop server Im itching to play with. Only worth like 100 on ebay and kinda smashed, so thinking of playing with it.

I can drop a quad in it, but doubt its necessary for file sharing!

So whats the pros and cons of free nas? I see its not raid capable and can boot it off of a usb stick so the server can just run off of memory and maximize the hard drive space.

My router currently supports plugging a usb external into it, but doesnt support smart. So I have to plug it into desktop to see if drive health is good. But otherwise works.

Mainly just movies and games and memories like pictures i keep a redundant back up of.

And the last question is free nas some proprietary format that can be recognized by linux or winblows if the server crashes?

[stj]

Re: Free NAS

freenas uses the BSD filesystem afaik, unless it can now use ZFS.

[ozzy214]

Re: Free NAS

So only linux can read the data? So I would need to use a live disk to recover correct?

[stj]

Re: Free NAS

linux or BSD can read it.

but remember, if you raid - use mirroring, not striping.
if you stripe it and one drive fails - the data on the other is useless.

[ozzy214]

Re: Free NAS

Yeah wasnt planning on raiding it. More a headless server using free nas!

[Hondaman]

Re: Free NAS

I got NAS4FREE working a short time ago, it wasn't too difficult. FreeNAS, it seems to me, is "enterprise-class". They really suggest you use higher end hardware than NAS4FREE.

If you can benefit from FreeNAS, go for it. Set it up and enjoy it.

[Topcat]

Re: Free NAS

if you have the server already, load an OS and create shares. easy peasy.