Hello all, just here to pick your brains about a potential build to be used as a nas, I had originally planned on just buying another external hard drive as my older storage seems to be running out (got a 1TB full and an older 640gb - which is pretty much useless, and all the data on it is pretty much at risk, it has bad sectors, wont even de-fragment for me etc).
So I took a notion last week on trying to get a NAS up and running to see what al the fuss is about (using my old pc - asus-m2n68-vm board, 9950 black edition cpu), disconnecting my drive with my windows os on it and using a laptop drive I have laying around for the main storage and a usb drive as a boot device I set about downloading and configuring FreeNas. followed a few guides I found and everything seemed to work fine, got 1 laptop drive initially installed as ups then got a second laptop drive correctly configured as zfs (aye I've a few laptop drives floating about), connected it to the hub under the stairs and everything was flying, threw a few files onto it, connected to them from my desktop in my room and my laptop down stairs (and through a phone app even my phone - you may be wondering when am I ever going to be connecting my phone to the nas to view files - and the answer is never...I just wanted to see if I could lol).
So I can confidently say that I'm Liking this whole NAS idea, but they seem rather expensive considering a lot only allow 2 bays, looks like if you want more bays the premium seems to shoot up, so I was looking at perhaps a SFF/low power pc build that I could throw together and use as a NAS - seen a couple of builds already but wanted to get some feed back from the community here - anyone using the FreeNas software? - Any long -term feed back from your? - Any better recommendations for anything better? What sort of pc are you using for it?
And of course - hard drives - seagate nas drive vs WD red (it is the red one for nas right?) - just a matter of personal preference or would you strongly recommend one over the other?
Thanks if you made it this far and I look forward to your feedback - just an fyi - I've no real plans to build the nas right now (unless it ends up super cheap to the point where it beckons too much) its just something I've been thinking about the last week or so and wouldn't mind abit more info on, but I might consider at least getting a HD in the meantime to move some stuff away from my main drive
So I took a notion last week on trying to get a NAS up and running to see what al the fuss is about (using my old pc - asus-m2n68-vm board, 9950 black edition cpu), disconnecting my drive with my windows os on it and using a laptop drive I have laying around for the main storage and a usb drive as a boot device I set about downloading and configuring FreeNas. followed a few guides I found and everything seemed to work fine, got 1 laptop drive initially installed as ups then got a second laptop drive correctly configured as zfs (aye I've a few laptop drives floating about), connected it to the hub under the stairs and everything was flying, threw a few files onto it, connected to them from my desktop in my room and my laptop down stairs (and through a phone app even my phone - you may be wondering when am I ever going to be connecting my phone to the nas to view files - and the answer is never...I just wanted to see if I could lol).
So I can confidently say that I'm Liking this whole NAS idea, but they seem rather expensive considering a lot only allow 2 bays, looks like if you want more bays the premium seems to shoot up, so I was looking at perhaps a SFF/low power pc build that I could throw together and use as a NAS - seen a couple of builds already but wanted to get some feed back from the community here - anyone using the FreeNas software? - Any long -term feed back from your? - Any better recommendations for anything better? What sort of pc are you using for it?
And of course - hard drives - seagate nas drive vs WD red (it is the red one for nas right?) - just a matter of personal preference or would you strongly recommend one over the other?
Thanks if you made it this far and I look forward to your feedback - just an fyi - I've no real plans to build the nas right now (unless it ends up super cheap to the point where it beckons too much) its just something I've been thinking about the last week or so and wouldn't mind abit more info on, but I might consider at least getting a HD in the meantime to move some stuff away from my main drive
