Turning a dinosaur into a NAS

winlongummy · June 28, 2022

First post on LTT forums ever!

Kind of for shits and giggles, I wanted to turn my old Dell tower into a small NAS, but I wanted to sanity check with people here if it even makes sense:

Existing items:

Dell Inc. 0YC523 (LGA775 socket)

Intel 2004 Pentium D 2.8GHz

2 GB of DDR2(!) RAM

a chunky old 150W PSU

I have two new 3.5" 2TB seagate HDDs that I wanted to put into a RAID 0 configuration in the machine.

I don't really expect to have much greater storage needs as I'm only backing up some photo RAWs from my Micro 4/3rds olympus cameras, so I only see myself storing up to 2GB for the foreseeable future. I don't really intend to be working off of it very much as my photo editing involves using Lightroom and storing the catalog and previews on my actual PC rig and mainly having the NAS as a backup of the RAWs.

Looking into TrueNAS, but open to ideas.

BondiBlue · June 28, 2022

That machine would work, but it would consume a lot more power at idle than something newer. You might want to consider that if electricity cost is a concern for you. Also, that old Pentium D might not support all the instructions required by newer versions of FreeNAS/TrueNAS, so that could be a problem for you.

As for your storage - why RAID 0? In that configuration you'd have no redundancy, so if one drive dies you'd lose all the data across both drives.

winlongummy · June 28, 2022

Thanks for the super fast feedback! Would the DDR2 memory be an issue at all?

Also, my understanding is that TrueNAS does not recommend using a flash drive to run the OS off of, but how serious is their recommendation? Do I need to buy a small boot drive as well?

I guess I misunderstood RAID 0 vs RAID 1. Guess RAID 1 makes more sense, then!

BondiBlue · June 28, 2022

2 minutes ago, winlongummy said:

Thanks for the super fast feedback! Would the DDR2 memory be an issue at all?

No, memory type isn't an issue. 2GB is very low though, so newer versions of FreeNAS wouldn't be able to run very well. A lightweight Linux distribution might be a better choice in that regard, though you'd still have to deal with the issues of having an old CPU that lacks support for newer instructions, and it's still going to be a power hog compared to something newer.

4 minutes ago, winlongummy said:

Also, my understanding is that TrueNAS does not recommend using a flash drive to run the OS off of, but how serious is their recommendation? Do I need to buy a small boot drive as well?

That change happened a number of years ago. iXsystems (the developer of FreeNAS/TrueNAS) used to suggest running FreeNAS itself from a USB drive, but with newer versions of FreeNAS an internal drive is recommended, and preferably an SSD if at all possible. I'd personally suggest using an internal drive for your boot drive.

7 minutes ago, winlongummy said:

I guess I misunderstood RAID 0 vs RAID 1. Guess RAID 1 makes more sense, then!

This all depends on whether or not you'll actually end up running FreeNAS on that system. The CPU and RAM are two major limitations that would lead me to suggest not running FreeNAS on that hardware. If you do end up configuring your own RAID array you'll want to use RAID 1.

An0maly_76 · June 28, 2022

It can be done, I've seen some crazy stuff done with the LGA775, outlined in the video below. I'm doing similar with a Lenovo M71E SFF on the LGA1155 platform with an H61 board. Successfully upgraded its i3-2100 to an i7-2600 this morning, though I'm considering transplanting certain parts to a more updated board and case. Debating that while I wait on the upgraded copper-core cooler to arrive. Also have a SATA M.2 and a SATA III to SATA M.2 adapter (needed something compact due to chassis space constraints and its inability to boot from PCIe.

You might find this video interesting, as it deals specifically with the socket design you have. It's a lot of the reason I decided to repurpose the M71e and went for a 2600 for it. Watch it all the way through though. There's some jank that you might want to favor a workaround for, which is very doable.