I'm almost about to join you all!

[Chakalov]

Hello all,

I'm here to kindly ask some of your advice and point of view. I am a casual NAS user with one of the cheapest solutions on the market dating some years ago with Buffalo LinkStation Duo with 2x 1TB hard drives working in RAID1. I have the idea and will to upgrade in the very near future to a bigger and better NAS like a cheap but still good Synology DS413j adding one or two more hard drives to those I already have. I believe that would suit me just fine! Fortunately (or not?) just a week ago I bumped on a topic at Engadget about how to config and run a FreeNAS and thought right away "That's exactly what I want!" and start reading and digging the web for more details. Than after some reading was accomplished I decided it's Nas4free that I want even more because of two main reasons: the more clear user interface and the new version of FreeBSD. Since I'm not a Linux guru and my Terminal days are gone with DOS 6.22 I think of myself more as a just a little advanced user but far from a Pro-Admin-Master. I have to confess that perhaps the very main reason choosing DIY NAS instead of any Synology/QNAP/etc. NAS is that this is for me a (very!) interesting and new project on undiscovered territory and not just go-and-buy-the-magazine-recommended-solution-you-can-afford.

And so now that I know that I'm definitely on the search of MiniATX case with some main board, RAM and silent fans I still have some things unclear:
- the 1 million dollar question: do I really need NF4/FN or I'll be good with something more simple like OpenMediaVault
- do I need an external RAID controller or I can spare some $200?
- from what I read replacing a damaged disk in RAID5 and rebuilding a UFS volume isn't a rocket science?
- how should hardware failure troubles my sleep at night? I imagine my worse storyboard for a sleep replacing the USB stick (or SSD) where the N4F lives...

I'm running Mac's at home no Windows to be seen, so a Time Machine backup could be a neat feature. I have no demand on huge storage meaning everything I can easily live with 2TB of storage. I currently have TP-Link TL-WDR3600 allowing some good wifi speed and gigabit connectivity over the wire. A must have would be an FTP server, Torrent client and AFP support of course. So nothing special, nothing that even OMV doesn't have or anything that needs extra hardware.

I thank you all in advance for your thoughts and recommendations!

Greetings from Sofia, Bulgaria!

Andy

[b0ssman]

1) In terms of complexity there is not much of a difference between N4F, FN and OMV. The first two are based on Freebsd the last is based on Debian Linux.
2) You do not need an external Raid controller, however if you want more than 6 disc you will need a controller. A good choice here is the ibm m1015 which are just a bit above $100.
3) The big advantage of Freebsd system is the option of using ZFS which has inbuild raid 5 support and has some advantages in data integrity.
here is a guide on what you need to do to replace a disc in ZFS http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0149
4) A failed USB stick with ZFS is no problem. Just put a new N4F on a Stick and go to ZFS configuration and press ZFS import. You can also save the config and just import it on a new install and all will be as before.

[Chakalov]

Hi b0ssman,

I would like to use UFS software RAID with no more than 4 disk and from what I read it's almost the same procedure recovering a damaged disk if you keep the config file. Am I correct? I know ZFS is better but it comes with more hardware demands that I'm not sure I can provide.

Thanks!

[b0ssman]

Replacing a disc in Software Raid 5 is very similar.
http://wiki.nas4free.org/doku.php?id=faq:0058

for ZFS the only bigger requirement is Ram. you should have at least 8gb.

Most recent CPUs should be able to handle ZFS if you are not doing compression/ dedup or encryption