FreeNas Questions

ste-sim2x9 · 29 May 2013 at 18:04

I'm new to networking storage, I've just built a system and installed FreeNas but need a few questions answered.

1. If i set my shares up as guest instead of adding users would that be ok., i mean no one that is not on my network could view them or am i wrong.

2. One of my hard drive is my media drive that's in my HTPC, will i have to copy the files to another drive before setting that drive up in freenas. I have all my music albums and backups of my blu-rays on it and don't want to lose them.

ste-sim2x9 · 29 May 2013 at 19:57

Cheers guys, I'll have to get a spare drive and and move my data before i put the drive in my nas system and format to ZFS. My media drive in my htpc is 3tb and is half full, wish I thought about building a nas system before I built my htpc. Putting drives in raid is not really what I wanted to do, I'm only having 2 drives in my nas system, my 3tb drive from my htpc so I can access the files without having my htpc turned on and because i'm building another htpc for my bedroom and want to to use the same 3tb drive with all the media files. And a 500gb drive that's attached to my laptop via caddy with my backup software.

ste-sim2x9 · 29 May 2013 at 21:09

ManLoveRulesOK said:
I'd recommend ditching the 500gb drive and buying a second 3TB drive to mirror the first, I know I wouldn't want backups on a single drive. ZFS and FreeNAS make raid inccredibly simple, its literally a case of ctrl + click to select the drives you want to use, name the storage pool and select the type of raid you want to use.

Edit: some sound advice above. I will be doing similar but 8x2tb in RAIDZ2 with 2 more drives as hot spares and possibly another 4x1tb in RAIDZ one in the same pool

Going right over my head ha ha, I'm new to all this raidz, ZFS, raidz2 and pools, networked storage never really interested me until a few weeks ago so i'll have read up on all this.

ste-sim2x9 · 30 May 2013 at 17:39

I could do with some more help if anyone is offering, I have setup a shares called Backup Files that has my laptop's windows image and drivers/software on. Only i want to be able to connect to it via my laptop so i created a user with password and set the permissions in storage and i put my user/password in but when i go to connect to the backup files shares it don't let me in. Anyone know what i could be doing wrong?, if i set a guest it lets me in fine without the user/pass.

ste-sim2x9 · 2 Jun 2013 at 21:12

Uhtred said:
as above, I recommend using ZFS and if you're worried about losing what data you have then consider RAIDZ (single parity)

This requires 3 disks and will still operate if one of those disks were to fail, giving you time to replace it.

so your saying i'd be best buying three 3tb drives and put them in mirror raidz. How does that work!

ste-sim2x9 · 3 Jun 2013 at 08:09

Right so one of the 3tb drives would be for backup, would that be hidden?.I've seen those western digital red network drives, are they better to use than the normal ones.

ste-sim2x9 · 3 Jun 2013 at 10:30

Thanks for the info, i understand now more now.