First Install Question

[cmcigas]

Hi everyone, new to FreeNAS, going to be installing it for the first time tonight and just wanted to confirm one thing. From knowing most operating systems, installing them on a drive doesnt take away the rest of space on the drive.

But what it seems like, if you install FreeNAS on a hard drive, like my 600GB HDDs, it essentially takes away all the space on that drive, is this correct? Is that why everyone uses a USB stick to run the software? I feel like that's how it works but I just wanted some confirmation.

Thank you

 

[wblock]

The operating system itself is kept separate from storage drives:

The FreeNAS® operating system is installed to at least one device that is separate from the storage disks. The device can be a SSD, USB memory stick, or DOM (Disk on Module). Installation to a hard drive is discouraged as that drive is then not available for data storage.

Usually this means a small SSD or USB stick is used for storing the operating system.

 

[cmcigas]

Thanks for the reply, so that basically means, if I do install it on the 600GB hard drive, that drive is now unusable in the storage pool. Now I just have to find how to install it on the USB using that ISO file from the site :)