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Might switch to FreeNAS - Hardware Question

DeaconFrost
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I think I know the answer to this question already (thinking yes), but here goes.  I'm thinking of doing away with my traditional NAS and building a FreeNAS box.  I have most of the parts already, but I'm stuck on the RAID card.  The motherboard I was planning to use only has a PCI-E x16 slot and an x1 slot.  Since I won't need a graphics card, would the PCI-E x4 card run okay in the x16 slot?

 

For reference, I have a few IBM M1015s saved in eBay.  That seems to be a popular card.  I already have a LSI MegaRAID 9260-4i, but I'm thinking that wouldn't be compatible or ideal?

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A hba should work fine in the 16x slot on the board.

 

What drives are you using? Since you already have a raid card, id just use hardware raid on that card and get a basic linux os to share it on the network.

 

You can also just use the ports on the motherboard if you don't need a lot of drives.

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I have 4x4TB of Seagate drives.  Drawing a blank as to their model, but they are currently running in a RAID5 array in a Synology NAS.

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Just now, DeaconFrost said:

I have 4x4TB of Seagate drives.  Drawing a blank as to their model, but they are currently running in a RAID5 array in a Synology NAS.

How many ports does your otherboared have? Id just use the motherboard sata connectors.

 

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I believe it has 4 or 6.  I have to dig up the specs.  Would I still be able to take advantage of ZFS?

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Just now, DeaconFrost said:

I believe it has 4 or 6.  I have to dig up the specs.  Would I still be able to take advantage of ZFS?

yep zfs doesn't care what the connector is, id just use the sata on the board then.

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It's an Intel DH61BE board, with a total of 6 ports.  Thanks for the info!  Looks like I'm good to go.

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