I am looking at a NAS solution and was considering QNAP but am now considering FreeNAS but have some basic questions to confirm what I think FreeNAS can do.
1. I want to start off with only 2x 2TB drives using RAIDZ1 (I think), and then want to be able to add more 2TB Hard drives as required up to a max of probably 4-5 x 2TB HDD (and as funds allow). Is this possible and will it act similar to a RAID5, ie when I ad the 3rd 2TB HDD will I have ~4TB usable space, and when I add a 4th will I have 6TB usable space? If this can happen is it pretty straight forward, is this what the "Auto import Volume" function is for?
2. Down the track when I have 4x 2TB hdd installed and they are nearing there limit, can I then replace all drives (1 by 1 obviously) with bigger HDD's assuming 6TB drives or something are the norm then, allowing much more disc space eg replace with 4x 6TB to allow ~18TB storage with 1x6TB as parity??
3. I am planning to run FreeNAS on an 8GB USB stick. If the USB drive dies, can I install FreeNAS on a new USB stick and recover my data on the ZRAID?
4. Can you have 2x USB sticks mirrored running the FreeNAS OS, so if one died it would still work? This is not really necessary if question 3 is possible.
5. I read in another post that you could shift your USB stick (running FreeNAS) and the HDD's to new hardware, does this mean that if the motherboard dies that you can just replace it and everything will be fine?
Basicly I am wanting to see what the weak parts are hardware wise and what the upgrade options are.
And yes I do understand that you don't actually get 2TB or usable HDD space from a 2TB HDD, just trying to make the calculations easy Thanks for any help in advance.
1. I want to start off with only 2x 2TB drives using RAIDZ1 (I think), and then want to be able to add more 2TB Hard drives as required up to a max of probably 4-5 x 2TB HDD (and as funds allow). Is this possible and will it act similar to a RAID5, ie when I ad the 3rd 2TB HDD will I have ~4TB usable space, and when I add a 4th will I have 6TB usable space? If this can happen is it pretty straight forward, is this what the "Auto import Volume" function is for?
2. Down the track when I have 4x 2TB hdd installed and they are nearing there limit, can I then replace all drives (1 by 1 obviously) with bigger HDD's assuming 6TB drives or something are the norm then, allowing much more disc space eg replace with 4x 6TB to allow ~18TB storage with 1x6TB as parity??
3. I am planning to run FreeNAS on an 8GB USB stick. If the USB drive dies, can I install FreeNAS on a new USB stick and recover my data on the ZRAID?
4. Can you have 2x USB sticks mirrored running the FreeNAS OS, so if one died it would still work? This is not really necessary if question 3 is possible.
5. I read in another post that you could shift your USB stick (running FreeNAS) and the HDD's to new hardware, does this mean that if the motherboard dies that you can just replace it and everything will be fine?
Basicly I am wanting to see what the weak parts are hardware wise and what the upgrade options are.
And yes I do understand that you don't actually get 2TB or usable HDD space from a 2TB HDD, just trying to make the calculations easy Thanks for any help in advance.