The best NAS solution.

beach_boy98 · July 13, 2015

I am looking to make a nas with my old core two duo and i need the software side of it. I looked at free nas but the ram side of it is putting me off because it needs to be both EEC and in such a huge capacity. I thought of a Linux solution but that is very undocumented so I am Unsure.

Any help is appreciated. Beach

@tmcclelland455 Have any ideas?Saw zeus so yeah.

Electronics Wizardy · July 13, 2015

For Freenas you don't Need ECC more than any other os. Free nas also work fine on 4gb or ram, just don't try to push it too hard. Freenas uses ZFS which was built for the enterprise where every system has ECC and lots of ram and thats why its recommended. If you are using this for you buiness get ECC and lots of ram. Ifs its just holding movies don't worry.

Blake · July 14, 2015

For Freenas you don't Need ECC more than any other os. Free nas also work fine on 4gb or ram, just don't try to push it too hard. Freenas uses ZFS which was built for the enterprise where every system has ECC and lots of ram and thats why its recommended. If you are using this for you buiness get ECC and lots of ram. Ifs its just holding movies don't worry.

No, for ZFS you need ECC alot more then other then other file systems. ZFS assumes the disks are wrong but the memory is correct, where as most other files systems assume the disk is right (oversimplification i know). That being said core 2 duo's don't support ECC (could be wrong this is going completely from memory).

I belive it is somthing like 1GB of RAM from each 1TB of disk space?

But you are right with the movies part...

Blake · July 14, 2015

I am looking to make a nas with my old core two duo and i need the software side of it. I looked at free nas but the ram side of it is putting me off because it needs to be both EEC and in such a huge capacity. I thought of a Linux solution but that is very undocumented so I am Unsure.

Any help is appreciated. Beach

@tmcclelland455 Have any ideas?Saw zeus so yeah.

Depends on what you know.

If you are better with NTFS and share permissions grab any copy of windows (even the old one the came with the core 2 duo system).

If you don't have a budget or have yet to learn either system go with Linux.

If you already know how to configure a bunch of shares in linux, choose linux.

If you do have a budget and haven't learnt either system go with a coin flip, you decide.

Captain_WD · July 14, 2015

I am looking to make a nas with my old core two duo and i need the software side of it. I looked at free nas but the ram side of it is putting me off because it needs to be both EEC and in such a huge capacity. I thought of a Linux solution but that is very undocumented so I am Unsure.

Any help is appreciated. Beach

@tmcclelland455 Have any ideas?Saw zeus so yeah.

Hey there,

As the guys said, it really depends on what you are going to do with your NAS. If it's a simple file storage that needs to be accessed over the network by only one user, then you don't really need a powerful system. Even a simple pre-built NAS should do the job (like the WD My Cloud: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=vXPvpv ). It also depends on how much storage space you are looking for.

If you are going for some more complex usage, you should make sure the components are powerful-enough to sustain the usage.

ZFS indeed is designed for more extensive and complex usage and it's recommended to use 1GB ECC memory for each TB that you have.

Also make sure you use NAS/RAID class drives for more stable performance and better safety of your data (like the WD Red: http://products.wdc.com/support/kb.ashx?id=FBhsZP )

It's up to what you want and can do with your system.

Captain_WD.