FreeNAS vs. Windows 8

Hikaru12 · April 13, 2015

Hopefully the title of this topic isn't too misleading. Currently, I have a Windows 8.1 box running my 3TB WD red drive as a NAS (plan to expand the drives later). I went with Windows because it's what I know and because they had storage spaces. Everyone has been telling me to go to FreeNAS and I can understand why. The ZFS system has pretty rock solid stability and RAM error recovery is pretty helpful. There's two main problems I have though:

1) I bought a AMD FX 8350 for Plex transcoding (plan on having multiple 1080P streams) because I needed something cheaper than a Xeon. I haven't been able to find a single AMD FX server board that supports ECC ram so there's probably a good chance I'm going to lose money and have to buy a new board, ram, and chip...but that's not my biggest problem

2) I have a Canon ImageClass MF4890DW multifunction laser printer. It has Linux drivers but Windows only scanner drivers/software. Even if I installed a Linux distro like Ubuntu or Mint in a FreeNAS jail I'd be screwed because I'd lose out on the scanning functionality of the printer (one of the main reasons I got it).

I usually scan in paper records, save them to a folder in Windows and then FTP that folders contents over to my Synology.

I've even thought about buying one of those crappy laptops on eBay for $80 to serve as the intermediary so I can go with FreeNAS but it doesn't look like there is going to be a cheap option here. Does anyone have any thoughts or am I basically screwed and will I have to get all new hardware? Thanks.

Blebekblebek · April 13, 2015

Since no one mention it.

in general why people don't use windows for their NAS is because of features, hardware requirements, and expansion.

most people (home user) won't use or probably too complicated to understand let alone setting it up.

the 2nd most important issue with workstation OS (in this case Windows 8) all windows OS (not the server edition) had limitations with number of connected device/user.

I can put numbers of cons list why Windows is not recommended for NAS but again it doesn't really matter if it doesn't suit what the user want (or let alone build)

but main point is NAS is just Storage Solution, it doesn't have to use "FreeNAS" to label your own box as a NAS BOX, if the setup that you build works for you then you have it, you don't have to listen everyone opinions if you are the one who make it works, and works the best for you.

heck, my first NAS build was on windows 98SE because setting up windows 2k was too complicated for me to do, that long before FreeNas even exist, and the same simple reason as you, printer and any other device that works natively on windows environment.

Gex · April 13, 2015

My "NAS" was Windows 7 using software RAID and I changed to FreeNAS, but the software RAID had major issues with all the power cuts I used to get so I ended up going back to a Windows 7 setup.

Also I used PS3 Media Server for Transcoding .mkv files since many of my device don't support mkv or if they do they don't seem to run so well.

You can install apps like PS3 media server on FreeNAS but it's so much easier than dealing with Linux, also PS3 Media Server Linux version seemed to have some bugs back when I tried it.

Hikaru12 · April 13, 2015

Well seeing as how I can do software RAID in Windows and have snapshots I'm not sure what there's really to hate. Perhaps the RAM scrubbing feature is helpful and obviously Windows consumes a lot of resources but losing the functionality of my scanner because of driver issues with Linux would suck. Thanks for the thoughts guys.