Best free OS for nas on tight budget

[TrainFan475]

I'm having a really hard time picking an os for my home nas. I built it out of an old dell pc with a Q8200 and 4gb ram (I just ordered an 8gb ddr2 800MHz kit). I want to use freenas because it's user friendly, but my motherboard doesn't support ecc ram. All the other threads I've checked strongly recommend ecc for freenas, so now I'm nervous weird crap will happen to my data if I don't use ecc. I will be mainly using it for video storage and file transferring.

[Metallus97]

Yeha ZFS without ECC ehhhhh...

 

How about OpenMediaVault. I have never used it but it seems ok.

 

But yeha in that case I recommend spending a few bucks and getting unraid. In my experience this ruins the best on old HW without ecc. That is also what I am doing for my VM/NAS/Docker server!

[Applefreak]

I have a NAS setup running Openmediavault 5 on it. With about 14 TB of usable ZFS storage with 2 hot spares, memory load is around 12 to 14 GB of 16 GB total. I am still able to upgrade it if I needed more. No ECC either but I use enterprise 24/7 drives and the system is only running once or twice a week. So far it has not been an issue to run it without ECC.

[TrainFan475]

Unraid basic is 60 bucks?

At that point I could just buy a cheapo motherboard that supports ecc

[Electronics Wizardy]

16 minutes ago, Metallus97 said:

Yeha ZFS without ECC ehhhhh...

Its not any worse than any other filesystem without ecc

 

26 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

I'm having a really hard time picking an os for my home nas. I built it out of an old dell pc with a Q8200 and 4gb ram (I just ordered an 8gb ddr2 800MHz kit). I want to use freenas because it's user friendly, but my motherboard doesn't support ecc ram. All the other threads I've checked strongly recommend ecc for freenas, so now I'm nervous weird crap will happen to my data if I don't use ecc. I will be mainly using it for video storage and file transferring.

Ecc won't affect you with freenas anymore than anyother filesystem.

What drives do you have? ZFS doesn't like mixed drives that much

 

Make backups so you don't lose data.

 

Unraid and other oses have the same risks if your not using ecc.

[PorkishPig]

I use FreeNAS on an old OptiPlex 9020 SFF with non-ECC memory and it works like a dream. Of course, you're losing out on some redundancy, but you wouldn't be at any higher risk than if you were running any other OS. Keep in mind that a large amount of users will spin up a FreeNAS instances on low-end used hardware.

[Metallus97]

17 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Its not any worse than any other filesystem without ecc

 

Ecc won't affect you with freenas anymore than anyother filesystem.

What drives do you have? ZFS doesn't like mixed drives that much

 

Make backups so you don't lose data.

 

Unraid and other oses have the same risks if your not using ecc.

oh I dient know that? But why can I find so much about better not to use ZFS without ecc?

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Metallus97 said:

oh I dient know that? But why can I find so much about better not to use ZFS without ecc?

Lots of myths spread by some people on the forums, and some misguided theories. Devs have corrected this. ECC is always good to have, but won't be any worse with ZFS  compared to anouther filesystem. All modern systems use ram as a disk cache for reads and writes, so if a error happens when its in the cache the system will have no idea about that error. 

[Metallus97]

2 minutes ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

Lots of myths spread by some people on the forums, and some misguided theories. Devs have corrected this. ECC is always good to have, but won't be any worse with ZFS  compared to anouther filesystem. All modern systems use ram as a disk cache for reads and writes, so if a error happens when its in the cache the system will have no idea about that error. 

Roger that, thats!

 

Ok then FreeNAS it is IMHO. Best free system by a long shot. As said above I like unraid for the nice KVM and docker support but yeha FreeNas is also nice.

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, Metallus97 said:

Roger that, thats!

 

Ok then FreeNAS it is IMHO. Best free system by a long shot. As said above I like unraid for the nice KVM and docker support but yeha FreeNas is also nice.

One bit annoying with ZFS  and anysystem that uses is it bacn be a pain to upgrade storage on due to how raidZ can't be expanded, and it doesn't like mixed drive siZes

 

Snapraid + merger fs might work well here, allows mixed drive siZes like unraid, free, somewhat easy to use, runs on any linux distro or windows.

 

I like proxmox for its vm ability, but thats probably overkill here.

[TrainFan475]

@Electronics Wizardy My shared drive will be a 1tb WD Blue (WD10EZEX). I'm using a 1tb seagate drive as the boot drive. I know it's excessive for a boot drive, but it was what I had laying around.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

2 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

@Electronics Wizardy My shared drive will be a 1tb WD Blue (WD10EZEX). I'm using a 1tb seagate drive as the boot drive. I know it's excessive for a boot drive, but it was what I had laying around.

 

With so few drives, Id just add those to your desktop, and setup some fileshares on your desktop.

 

But If those are your drives, Id run some linux distro on it so you can use the boot drive for data aswell

[TrainFan475]

1 minute ago, Electronics Wizardy said:

With so few drives, Id just add those to your desktop, and setup some fileshares on your desktop.

Windows 10 sharing is such a pain

[Electronics Wizardy]

Just now, TrainFan2020 said:

Windows 10 sharing is such a pain

How is it a pain?

 

You mount and use it like a share from any other nas, and its as easy as setting up sharing under folder properties.

[PorkishPig]

11 minutes ago, TrainFan2020 said:

My shared drive will be a 1tb WD Blue (WD10EZEX). I'm using a 1tb seagate drive as the boot drive. I know it's excessive for a boot drive, but it was what I had laying around.

FreeNAS works best on a decent flash drive or a cheap low capacity SSD with DRAM. Use the 1TB WD Blue as a storage pool.

[straight_stewie]

Ubuntu Server + Samba + NFS for Linux

 

You can ignore NFS if you are only using Windows devices Windows 7 or less.

You can ignore Samba if you are only using Windows devices Windows 10 or greater.

 

This is a much more command liney way to go, but free, cheap, and effective. This is a way to ostensibly turn any normal desktop that could run Ubuntu into a network file server, so you can avoid all of the difficulty in making sure hardware is lined up well for the NAS OSs, which as you are finding out, can sometimes be a little more finicky in what they like.

If you decide to go this route, you'll have to follow the necessary guides, but I do have one additional thing to add:

When you are installing Ubuntu Server, it's easiest if the machine has it's own keyboard and screen. Right after installing the OS, install open-ssh server. Then, stick the machine wherever it's final resting place will be and use an ssh client from your preferred machine to do the rest of the setup.