is free nas for me and my situation

[lt72884]

Ello all. i am new here but i have heard of free nas and seen it in the past. When i was doing my ccna and ccnp back in 08 and 09, a fellow class mate brought it to my attention. never used it or looked heavily into it.

Here is my question.

I have 5 internal hard drives not being used at the moment. some old school ide and some sata (from 2007)

I dont want to waste them and i dont want a bunch of enclosures running around the house. haha. it is just the wife and i on the network. i have an old school pc with like 256 or 512 mb ddr ram as well that can be used as the nas. Is this something i should do or is free nas more of a business solution? what options do i have for storage with those drives for just images,music and maybe movies? im just trying to use the stuff and would like them as back solutions but all in the same enclouser of some sort.

thanks

 

[cyberjock]

With the amount of RAM you have, FreeNAS will need more RAM.

Honestly, it's hard to say what is good for your situation because we don't know all of the hardware you plan to use.

Can you list the hard drive sizes and the hardware you'd be using to build the server?

I use FreeNAS at home, but it is also a good business solution too. It really depends on alot of factors.

 

[lt72884]

With the amount of RAM you have, FreeNAS will need more RAM.

Honestly, it's hard to say what is good for your situation because we don't know all of the hardware you plan to use.

Can you list the hard drive sizes and the hardware you'd be using to build the server?

I use FreeNAS at home, but it is also a good business solution too. It really depends on alot of factors.

I have a amd 2800 and for the ram, i an find more at thrift stores for like 50 cents a stick. For the drives, i have about 200gb - 300gb worth spread between 5 or 6 drives. im still locating them all. 2 of them are sata 1.5 i think and the rest are ide. i do need the storage since i dont want to by a new drive. i am a full time mechanical engineering student and i want to be resourceful. haha.

i do not need it to be fast, just needs to save data which will be 90% images and music with maybe a movie, but i have a 500gb drive usb2.0 strictly for movies.

thanks guys

 

[Stephens]

I don't think FreeNAS is the best solution for grouping disparately sized drives into a pool. 200GB spread across 5 drives isn't worth saving IMO. You can get a 2TB drive that'll replace all of them 10x over for $100. It simply isn't worth it.

 

[lt72884]

I don't think FreeNAS is the best solution for grouping disparately sized drives into a pool. 200GB spread across 5 drives isn't worth saving IMO. You can get a 2TB drive that'll replace all of them 10x over for $100. It simply isn't worth it.

well damn, haha. that works. maybe i can get them all in my curent desktop. haha.

well, at least now i know more about freenas and when it is worth using it.

tahnks

matt