FreeNAS Setup Recommendations

[tdough21]

I'm getting ready to setup my first FreeNAS system and I'm not sure how to proceed. I need a storage solution for about 600 GB of photos and videos and growing. Here is the list of hardware I have available for this build.

Pentium 4 3.0 ghz processor with 2 GB of RAM​

Two 2TB Hitachi Deskstar hard drives​

Two 1TB Hitachi Deskstar hard drives​

2GB USB Flash Drive​

My questions are:

What version of FreeNAS should I use?​

What raid configuration should I use?​

ZFS or UFS?​

Any help would be greatly appreciated, thanks.

 

[louisk]

How much redundancy do you want? Put another way, can you tollerate more than 1 disk dying? RAIDZ/RAID5 can tollerate 1 failed spindle. More than that and the volume itself dies (you lose data). RAIDZ2/RAID6 can tollerate 2 failed spindles before you lose data.

I would not recommend ZFS on a 32bit system. I'm not saying it can't be done, but I wouldn't recommend it. I would also not recommend ZFS on less than 4G of RAM. If you can't get 64bit and 4G of RAM, you're probably restricted to UFS.

Unless you have an actual need to use a component that exists in FreeNAS 7 that doesn't exist in FreeNAS 8, I would use FreeNAS 8.

 

[tdough21]

I'm not sure my machine can handle 4GB of RAM or 64 bit architecture, so I think I'm stuck with UFS for now. Since I have mismatched drive capacities (2TB & 1TB), how does that work?

 

[Milhouse]

Since I have mismatched drive capacities (2TB & 1TB), how does that work?

Can't remember for UFS, but probably the same as ZFS where all disks in the vdev (group) will be sized according to the smallest disk. So a vdev using a mixture of 2TB and 1TB disks would treat all disks as 1TB disks.

In ZFS (don't know about UFS), a RAIDZ1 vdev of 4 disks (2x2TB and 2x1TB) would result in 3TB of usable capacity (3x1TB disks plus 1TB for parity). However, the two 1TB disks could in future be replaced with 2TB disks (one at a time: replace a disk, resilver, replace the second disk, resilver and expand), resulting in a total storage capacity of 6TB (3x2TB plus 2TB parity).

A RAIDZ2 setup with dual parity (two disk redundancy) would start you off with 2TB usable storage (2x1TB plus 2x1TB parity), expandable to 4TB (2x2TB plus 2x2TB parity).

 

[louisk]

UFS is not as fancy as ZFS. The general process is to create your volume and then you're done. You don't resize it later when you get bigger disks, you replace the whole volume. In order to keep redundancy, you would create either:
2x2T mirror and a 2x1T mirror (they will be seperate volumes, and you will access them seperately, ie, if one fills up, you can still use the other, but you can spill over from one to the other).
You could also create stripes of 4x1T in a RAID5 as a single volume (netting ~2.7T usable). Technically, you may be able to also mirror the other 2x1T stripes, but I don't know if FreeNAS will let you do this.
If you're going to be using UFS, I would push to have all your spindles the same size. It will make things much easier. I'd probably sell the 2x1T and either pick up 1 or 2x 2T. Then you could make a RAID5 with 3 or 4x2T and end up with ~2.5T or ~3.5T usable (taking into account formatting).

The other thing you could do would be to sell the p4 board/cpu/mem and buy a cheap c2d or atom system and that would allow you to go 64bit, although you have to be careful about the board you pick to ensure you can go to 4 or 8g of RAM. Many vendors cheap boards are still limited to 2 or 4G.

 

[tdough21]

So if I want to go with ZFS, would this hardware work?
Motherboard
http://www.amazon.com/dp/B003YA2OWA/?tag=ozlp-20
Cpu
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16819116413
Memory
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16820220466

Also I currently have a 220 watt ps, will that be enough power for this plus 4 hard drives?