Disaster Recovery Question - Considering to go with FreeNAS

[ChrisHolzer]

Hi there!

Currently I am using a plain Raid1 of 2x 8TB HDD's in a windows 10 machine as central data store for my PC's, tablets, and HTPC's.
I have been thinking about building a new NAS with FreeNAS in the future, with the goal to increase the storage capacity.

So with my current setup I could just plug one of my 8TB HDD's into another PC and get access to the data that is store on it (in case that the raid controller, the PC or windows dies).

How does "disaster recovery" work with FreeNAS?
Lets say I use a mainboard with 8 SATA controllers (SATA1: SSD for the FreeNAS install, other SATA ports for the HDDs) to build my NAS. What happens when that mainboard dies and I can not get an exact replacement? Meaning I have to use a different brand/model mainboard (or SATA controller card).

Is Free NAS able to discover an array on a bunch of drives I connect?
When I change the mainboard can the old FreeNAS install still boot with the new mainboard?
Or how is that disaster case handled?

Thanks in advance! :)

 

[melloa]

You move the disks to another FreeNAS system, import the pool, restore the config (you got to save it - I do every time I make a change on my datasets, users, shares, etc), and all is back up and running.

 

[ChrisHolzer]

You move the disks to another FreeNAS system, import the pool, restore the config (you got to save it - I do every time I make a change on my datasets, users, shares, etc), and all is back up and running.

Thanks a lot! I was first thinking about going with a QNAP system, but then I read too many topics from users who had a hardware failure after a few years and their array would not work on the replacement system.

So what you described there sounds really good! :)

 

[SweetAndLow]

Disks can move to any hardware and you can even move your boot device to any hardware. It's very portable.

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