Hey, I'm Brent.

[Brent]

What's going on everyone,

I'm a complete N00b at networking (as some of you have seen via my posts...), and, I figured I was a bit rude for not introducing myself...
Anyhow, I recently decided to get a new laptop for myself (it's quite stock, I'll list the specs in a minnute) and decided I wanted something like a, "cloud" storage but without having to pay a monthly fee, so I began my quest into searching up home networks and what-not, at first, I was looking at a WHS, and than later (I believe it was lifehacker) had posted about FreeNAS, and I was so intrigued by it (I am more of a designer(I design websites...(very basic))) so I decided to download everything, chuck it on a USB, and after realizing I had wiped my old laptop (specs in a minute...) decided that this was the thing for me :)

Anyways, time for a specs update...

Current Machine (not Freenas)
TOSHIBA Satellite P70-A
Intel(R) Core(TM) i7-4700MQ CPU @ 2.40GHz (8 CPUs), ~2.4GHz
16384MB RAM
Intel(R) HD Graphics 4600
Nvidia GeForce GT 740M
1 x HGST 1TB Internal HDD

(I'll get the exact specs of the FreeNAS machine tomorrow...)

and currently I'm looking at ordering a few of the 3.5" Seagate Barracude 7200.12 1TB HDD, and setting those up as part of the NAS

Anyways, expect alot of questions from me, I'm just a newbie (and probably one of the younger ones (sorry, no offence meant to all you wise people))

 

[cyberjock]

I'm not sure how you plan to build a server, but if you plan to use USB hard drives, think again. USB is a recipe for failure. USB is great for portability, but for long term solutions(and the limitations of having no SMART, drives disconnecting with any error automatically, etc.) you are asking to kiss your data goodbye. Plenty have already done that in this forum, don't be a statistic!

 

[cyberjock]

I wasn't done.. doh...


Anyway, welcome to the forums. Take a read of the manual(it really is well written!) and a look at the noobie presentation(link in my sig). Both of those, if you read and follow the recommendations, will make you very happy. :)

 

[Brent]

I'm always open for a link of what I should be looking at getting :), ALWAYS!
Thanks CyberJock. Honestly.

 

[cyberjock]

The stickies are a good place to start. Most of those are filled with stuff that have been written because so many people have gotten those wrong. :P

I think I may have gotten ahead of myself. I don't think you plan to use the laptop as the server longterm. But laptops make poor FreeNAS servers. Often the NIC isn't compatible, it has obscure BIOSes that don't work with FreeBSD, have limited upgradability for RAM and hard drives, etc.

 

[Brent]

Too true, I do plan around October(ish) to setup a whole system...(though I'm not looking until around than) so for now I'm fine with using the laptop (though it's a piece of crap...)