FreeNAS 8 or OpenSolaris?

[Essexraptor]

Advice please guys for a Home Server/NAS

Toying with building up the above with bits and pieces hiding in the back of my stash cupboard ... I realise I may have to wait for the price of HDD's to fall but ....hey ho!

I need to be able to acccess the data from Linux (Desktop and Lappies), Win7 (a couple of desktops) and maybe even a Apple pad thing that my wife keeps nagging about

I just can't decide between FreeNAS 8 or OpenSolaris. I understand that I could use Server editions of mainstream *nix releases but I'm keen to give the ZFS system a go. Basically because it appears, so far, to be more flexible with adding more pools/redundancy etc.

Your ideas and thoughts would be welcomed. Don't worry I don't mind being called a plum if you think I'm barking mad

 

[Essexraptor]

thanks for the reply

Useful info.

I've got a set of 4Gb DDR3 Dual coming in from RMA and I was going to try getting away with a 4 TB array in RAIDz or RAIDz2 with that. Should be ok?

Just wish these HDD prices would come down !

In the meantime I think I'll try to scrape together some more smaller drives and run a few tests/set-ups beforehand.

Might be a wise idea for a novice

cheers anyway