Few questions about FreeNas

[Zorin1]

I need some advice and I am new to FreeNas. I am trying to decide if I should build a FreeNas server or buy and off the self NAS. I currently have a d-link 2 bay NAS in a raid 1 with two 1TB drives. I had this little unit for over 5 years and it is time to place it. Plus the fact that I need more storage. One thing that I like about my d-link is that it will spin down the drive and is idle most of the time. Does FreeNas spin down the drive and go into idle state? I think my d-link has an on network wake up. Next question is, how do you know when a drive in FreeNas is having issues? Do you get an email alert? I would run it headless so if it spitting out warning/error message to the console, I won’t see it. And my last question, if a drive goes bad how is it identified? I’m scared that I might replace the wrong drive and really screw up the raid.



thanks

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Does FreeNas spin down the drive and go into idle state?

It can be set up that way, but the consensus in these forums seems to be that the potential energy savings aren't worth the increased wear and tear on the drives. I haven't seen any data cited to support this, but that doesn't mean it isn't so.

how do you know when a drive in FreeNas is having issues? Do you get an email alert?

Yes, you get an email alert, assuming you have it set up correctly. It isn't difficult.

if a drive goes bad how is it identified?

Step 1 is marking your drives with their serial #s in a way that's visible without removing them from the case. Step 2 is matching the identified bad drive's GUID with its serial #, which is something @Bidule0hm can help you with (check out his useful scripts).