NAS with 4GB?

[Parsa Mre]

hi, I wanted to turn my old AMD laptop with 4GB of ram to NAS, but FreeNAS needs at least 8GB of ram. What should I do?

[Spork829]

Upgrade it, try it anyways and see what happens, or... be sad I guess

[Spork829]

Upgrade it, try it anyways and see what happens, or... be sad I guess

 

Edit: 10/10 double post would only press submit once again

[mpsparrow]

Laptops don't really make a great NAS.

[knightslugger]

1 minute ago, mpsparrow said:

Laptops don't really make a great NAS.

I beg to differ. they do not consume large amounts of power, have built-in UPS.

[KenjiUmino]

2 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

I beg to differ. they do not consume large amounts of power, have built-in UPS.

... and no real options to put large HDDs in there or go RAID.

 

and most laptops have shitty cooling not suited for 24/7 operation

[ProjectBox153]

8 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

I beg to differ. they do not consume large amounts of power, have built-in UPS.

And shitty cooling and one HDD bay usually. 

OP, I wouldn't do a laptop NAS. A lot of times the network interface (ethernet) doesn't work with laptops, the cooling is crap, etc. But no, you don't actually need 4GB of RAM. I run FreeNAS Corral on 3GB RAM with two HDDs. 

[mpsparrow]

Just now, knightslugger said:

I beg to differ. they do not consume large amounts of power, have built-in UPS.

A laptop has basically zero redundancy and room to upgrade. A cheap server or desktop would give more processing power, allow you to upgrade and add extra storage or ram, RAID support, better cooling and more suitable to 24/7 operations.

[knightslugger]

14 minutes ago, KenjiUmino said:

... and no real options to put large HDDs in there or go RAID.

 

and most laptops have shitty cooling not suited for 24/7 operation

 

11 minutes ago, Jamiec1130 said:

And shitty cooling and one HDD bay usually. 

OP, I wouldn't do a laptop NAS. A lot of times the network interface (ethernet) doesn't work with laptops, the cooling is crap, etc. But no, you don't actually need 4GB of RAM. I run FreeNAS Corral on 3GB RAM with two HDDs. 

 

10 minutes ago, mpsparrow said:

A laptop has basically zero redundancy and room to upgrade. A cheap server or desktop would give more processing power, allow you to upgrade and add extra storage or ram, RAID support, better cooling and more suitable to 24/7 operations.

 

But it does the friggin job fellas, and while I agree you can't put very large redundant internal hard drives in them, it has USB ports to install external drives in if you feel you need the room or redundancy. Sure it's not the best super awesome set up, but show me one that can't be improved somehow. Christ it's not like these kinds of NAS units are going to play file host to a building of 50 employees or hosting several resolution video streams to lots of clients... so cooling isn't necessarily a critical need (probably run idle 99% of the time) Most often it's just a home user looking for a place to store his photos, movies, and music that doesn't involve cluttering up their desk or office (stick it in a closet, out of sight out of mind). That's why I made a nas out of my old Lenovo box.

 

NAS means a lot of different things to a lot of different people with a lot of different needs. I think ya'll would do well to remember that...

[mpsparrow]

3 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

 

 

 

But it does the friggin job fellas, and while I agree you can't put very large redundant internal hard drives in them, it has USB ports to install external drives in if you feel you need the room or redundancy. Sure it's not the best super awesome set up, but show me one that can't be improved somehow. Christ it's not like these kinds of NAS units are going to play file host to a building of 50 employees or hosting several resolution video streams to lots of clients... so cooling isn't necessarily a critical need (probably run idle 99% of the time) Most often it's just a home user looking for a place to store his photos, movies, and music that doesn't involve cluttering up their desk or office (stick it in a closet, out of sight out of mind). That's why I made a nas out of my old Lenovo box.

 

NAS means a lot of different things to a lot of different people with a lot of different needs. I think ya'll would do well to remember that...

I am not arguing that a laptop can't be turned into a NAS. I am just saying that if you want a better solution I suggest not using a laptop. An "old AMD laptop" is going to have trouble doing anything past transferring files.

[knightslugger]

Just now, mpsparrow said:

I am not arguing that a laptop can't be turned into a NAS. I am just saying that if you want a better solution I suggest not using a laptop. An "old AMD laptop" is going to have trouble doing anything past transferring files.

"Old" can mean 1 year to some people. If I buy a new laptop, i am certain to call the one i bought a year ago, "My old laptop" too... And he may not need something more powerful. Ya can't beat the price on reused equipment! considering a more powerful solution would need a KVMB that is going to increase the price considerably, over $0, vs a old laptop with all that built-in.

 

sometimes, just okay is good enough.

[KenjiUmino]

5 minutes ago, knightslugger said:

it has USB ports to install external drives

usb HDDs are the worst, most unrelieable things that i ever ... EVER had to deal with.

not so much because of the actual harddisk inside of them ... but the enclosures ... oh boy ... one shittier than the other.

 

i had so many usb HDD cases (2.5" and 3.5") that decided dropping power or disconnecting the drive at random during a file transfer is a great idea ... and that's what finally corrupted the file system and eventually killed the HDD completely.

 

but yeah ... a spare laptop that is not critical for anything right now is a nice thing to toy around with, try things and eventually learn something.

 

so ... try it out, but don't put any data on it you can't afford to lose.

[Niemo86]

On 5/9/2017 at 11:23 AM, knightslugger said:

 

 

 

But it does the friggin job fellas, and while I agree you can't put very large redundant internal hard drives in them, it has USB ports to install external drives in if you feel you need the room or redundancy. Sure it's not the best super awesome set up, but show me one that can't be improved somehow. Christ it's not like these kinds of NAS units are going to play file host to a building of 50 employees or hosting several resolution video streams to lots of clients... so cooling isn't necessarily a critical need (probably run idle 99% of the time) Most often it's just a home user looking for a place to store his photos, movies, and music that doesn't involve cluttering up their desk or office (stick it in a closet, out of sight out of mind). That's why I made a nas out of my old Lenovo box.

 

NAS means a lot of different things to a lot of different people with a lot of different needs. I think ya'll would do well to remember that...

Thank you for the information. This is what I wanted to see. NAS is a whole new thing to me and I have an old laptop I've upgraded from because the display is cracked and lugging around a monitor to use the pc is obviously not practical. 

 

With that said I wanted to experiment and learn how to build a home NAS to get familiar with and eventually build one that suits my needs as I understand them better by converting my 4gb ram Sony Vaio into one.