Hello, I am interested in creating a new NAS that would have some sort of redundancy. I currently have an old Dlink 321 2 bay NAS with 2 2TB (4tb total) Seagate Baracude drive for the past 5 years (no RAID configuration) filled with ISO movie files that I stream via XBMC/Kodi to an old Boxee Box and a Amazon Fire TV. The NAS is now completely full along with a 1tb drive on my desk top and a 1tb external WD drive all with movies. Also a couple of weeks ago I had a scare that one of my drives in my NAS was failing, time to build/buy a larger NAS with some kind of RAID configuration.
My original plan was to just buy a RAID enclosure but at a price point I decided to buy a Netgear ReadyNAS 4 bay for around $220 from Amazon. I liked that it was strong enough to let me stream from more than one tv at a time, but what I especially liked was that it had a system (X-RAID) that allows me to continue to add drives as needed. I put two drives in it, it mirrors them (RAID 2?) if I put 3-4 drives in it (RAID 5) I think. Either way it allows me to not drop all my cash at once and to make sure I buy drives from different batches to ensure that they all don't fail at the same time. Although with this system I believe I could never take all the drives out and put them into another NAS unit if the actual NAS unit fails.
A buddy at work looked up the hardware on the ReadyNAS and convinced me to return it and build my own server NAS type computer, Ill not bore you guys and go into the hardware he recommended just yet;) But before I do return the NAS I did have a couple of questions that I think I know the answer to but wanted to ask them on here.
1) FreeNAS needs to be set up at initial boot with all the drives I intend to use right?? I cant add drives down the road when I need more space like UNRAID without reformatting the drives and losing all the data?
2) If the computer I build fails or I decide to upgrade the computer at a latter time, I cannot remove the drives and plug them into another FreeNAS machine and it will automatically recognize the files?
Thanks guys, I appreciate any help you could throw me.
My original plan was to just buy a RAID enclosure but at a price point I decided to buy a Netgear ReadyNAS 4 bay for around $220 from Amazon. I liked that it was strong enough to let me stream from more than one tv at a time, but what I especially liked was that it had a system (X-RAID) that allows me to continue to add drives as needed. I put two drives in it, it mirrors them (RAID 2?) if I put 3-4 drives in it (RAID 5) I think. Either way it allows me to not drop all my cash at once and to make sure I buy drives from different batches to ensure that they all don't fail at the same time. Although with this system I believe I could never take all the drives out and put them into another NAS unit if the actual NAS unit fails.
A buddy at work looked up the hardware on the ReadyNAS and convinced me to return it and build my own server NAS type computer, Ill not bore you guys and go into the hardware he recommended just yet;) But before I do return the NAS I did have a couple of questions that I think I know the answer to but wanted to ask them on here.
1) FreeNAS needs to be set up at initial boot with all the drives I intend to use right?? I cant add drives down the road when I need more space like UNRAID without reformatting the drives and losing all the data?
2) If the computer I build fails or I decide to upgrade the computer at a latter time, I cannot remove the drives and plug them into another FreeNAS machine and it will automatically recognize the files?
Thanks guys, I appreciate any help you could throw me.