Installation

[kaelan36]

In the installation video on youtube, he says to get a memory stick and plug it into the server to install the os on, why wouldnt he just put it on the hdd? I am not 100% sure thats what he was doing but it looked like.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k-mRgeDS8rk

Timestamp: 3:12
anyone explain why? do i have to do this too to install it on the server? And if so, do i just leave the memory stick there?

 

[Mirfster]

You want the FreeNAS OS installed on something separate of the data drives.

He was using a USB Stick which is fine and would free up a SATA Port. Thinking has since moved forward a bit around here and some of us (me included) prefer to install FreeNAS on older SSD(s). There has been a lot of issues with USB Sticks having short life spans as well as it being slower; especially when installing updates.

However, there is really nothing *wrong* with using a USB stick (or two if you want to mirror the OS Drives) and for some with limited space/ports it suits them fine.

So if you do install it on USB Stick(s); then you will have to leave the(m) attached in order to boot the OS.

 

[danb35]

why wouldnt he just put it on the hdd?

To answer this part of the question, FreeNAS is designed to keep the OS separate from the data. You can put it on whatever device you want, but that device will be dedicated entirely to the OS and can't be used for data storage. You could put it on a 10 TB drive if you wanted, but about 99.9% of that space would be wasted. A more sensible thing to do is to install the OS onto a small (16 GB or so) flash device, be that a USB stick, an SSD, or a SATA DOM.

 

[pirateghost]

http://doc.freenas.org/9.10/intro.html#compact-or-usb-flash