Wanting to build a home NAS

[shaneh890]

I’m going to be using an old computer I’m getting for free and I wanted to recycle it in some way to limit the tech waste. I want to make a home NAS using freenas but didn’t know minimum specs needed. 
 

the computer is boosting a very powerful core 2 duo e4300 and 4 gigs of ram @800 (I believe it’s ddr3 but not positive). 
 

i would only be storing pictures and documents on it so no crazy large files or anything. 
 

I wouldn’t be apposed to putting in a better cpu or ram if it’s not too expensive 

 

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

Just now, shaneh890 said:

the computer is boosting a very powerful core 2 duo e4300 and 4 gigs of ram @800 (I believe it’s ddr3 but not positive)

I'd bet that it's DDR2. For that use case, you really don't need a powerful CPU, but some more RAM might speed things up.

Here is FreeNAS's guide

[Electronics Wizardy]

Do you need freenas? Id run another nas os, like ubuntu or open media vault. Frenas wants faster hardware than that, but that hardware would work fine as a nas.

 

What drive config do you plan to use

[KingTdiGGiTTy]

With that CPU and 8 gigs of RAM it would run fine, even though the website suggest more. 

Some of the more intensive features just wouldn't really work .

[Archer42]

Honestly I always preferred running plain linux with no gui for tasks like this. Amount of configuration needed for simple home nas is minimal, it does not take much time and it has the advantage of not containing all the bloat (which is useless in most cases) freenas and alternatives include.

 

Going that way the hardware is more than enough for the job, just be sure to verify that everything is working, there are no memory errors and such. Having random data corruption is not fun.

 

For freenas specifically... I am not sure. It is below official specs and might be annoyingly slow. But again, only because of all the bloat.

[Salacious B Crum]

On 1/21/2021 at 11:32 AM, Electronics Wizardy said:

Do you need freenas? Id run another nas os, like ubuntu or open media vault. Frenas wants faster hardware than that, but that hardware would work fine as a nas.

 

What drive config do you plan to use

X2 go with open media vault the learning curve is short and for your use case its spot on