FreeNAS w ECC, clients non-ECC = problem?

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caustic386

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Jul 9, 2014
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So I'm putting together a freeNAS box using Intel's
S1200V3RPL, M1015, and 32GB ECC RAM (8x4TB drives). As I was reading through the ECC vs non-ECC debate, my understanding is that ECC is critical due to data being stored in RAM *prior* to being written to disk. To that end, all my client machines are typical Windows desktops - non-ECC RAM. If a file is created/downloaded and saved to FreeNAS via SMB, is that almost like having non-ECC RAM in my NAS?

I realize this is probably one-in-a-billion, it's mostly just an exercise to see if I understand how ZFS works (and interacts with the network stack). Thanks!
 

rogerh

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Apr 18, 2014
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If your client computers do not have ECC RAM (and most don't) this creates no more 0f a problem when you are transferring the files than it does all the time you are storing, using, editing and otherwise keeping your file on the client computer. The short period of transfer to FreeNAS creates no special risks compared with any other transfer over the network. There is a very small chance of any given file being invisibly corrupted at any time until it is written to the ZFS filesystem. If the transfer concerns you then you can always do before and after checksums, but in practice this is not an issue for most people.
 
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