Looking for a NAS OS

[Jackpot17]

Looking for a NAS OS.

Thought about freeNAS but ECC ram is recommended and don't want to spend that much on a motherboard.

Apart from that the hardware isn't an issue, just looking for a suitable OS.

Would like to have 2tb of storage (Software RAID 1)

Requirements:

 Store files (Obviously)

 Can run Plex

 Files can be accessed outside of network (Personal cloud)

 Would be nice to access files on android devices

 

Help appreciated.

[Codyman125]

Keyword is "recommended". ECC is " recommend " by all good NAS software, don't need it though.

[79wjd]

9 minutes ago, Codyman125 said:

Keyword is "recommended". ECC is " recommend " by all good NAS software, don't need it though.

With FreeNAS it is more important than with most others as using non-ECC memory can cause you to permanently lose your pools (The FreeNAS OS gets loaded into RAM on boot and runs from memory).

 

You can certainly run FreeNAS without ECC (I did for about six months), but if the wrong bit is changed (i.e. a bit having to do with the OS for example) you're going to have a REALLLLLY bad day. 

[SaladFingers]

+1 for FreeNAS. ECC is always a good idea for a machine that has to run un-managed and trouble-free 24/7, be it with FreeNAS or not.

You could also go for a normal mainstream OS since you are building an actual rig. Can do pretty much everything either way.

[Aekim]

Look into openmediavault, rockstor or unraid. All of them don't recommend ecc. you can use plex and owncloud, too

[Principis]

Nas4free? I'm using it for Plex and as a normal nas and it's awesome (I hate freenas it's uses too much resources.... And is overal not easy)

Nas4free is really light and really easy

 

 

[Reckless5040]

12 hours ago, Principis said:

Nas4free? I'm using it for Plex and as a normal nas and it's awesome (I hate freenas it's uses too much resources.... And is overal not easy)

Nas4free is really light and really easy

 

 

I...what? You'd have to be running FreeNAS on a potato (I'm talking 478/939 stuff) to have resource issues unless you're not using enough RAM. Which brings me to your Suggestion... Nas4Free is built on the same tech as FreeNAS while managing tknhave less features. You're still supposed to have ECC.

[Mikensan]

To save money on ram and a board, buy a nice used raid card off ebay and replace the battery. There are drawbacks, IE the raid card dies you need to buy an identical one to get back up and going.

 

Otherwise if data integrity is less of a concern than budget, onboard controllers will typically do Raid1. 

 

unRaid does similar checksum / data verification via btrfs that FreeNAS via ZFS does, so you could look in to either purchasing unRaid or setting up your own linux box with butter FS (a lot of guides exist) and do it yourself. You won't get the performance out of unRaid that you would FreeNAS however.