Hi guys. I'm looking to build a Freenas and I hope I'm in the right spot. If not please let me know. I have a Synology Diskstation from 6 years ago and it's just awful. I need to get rid of it.
I'm a photographer and I have 800 GB of mission critical photography that I currently use Synctoy on my PC to back up between 3 HDDs every night. I hate doing this because it's a manual process and sometimes I forget and sometimes I have to wait 10 minutes while it works.
I also have a spare FX 6300 and 8 GB of DDR3 1600 RAM that I was told can be a great combo for a Freenas. So I got to thinking about building my own. Only problem is that I have no idea how to start. I looked online and the instructions don't answer my questions so I was hoping you guys might. Thanks in advance.
1) If my FX 6300 and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM will do the job, then how much more money would I need to budget? I have a case and PSU too. I need at least 3 HDDs in the thing (1 main drive and 2 backup) and they need to be at least 2 TB each. My budget is $500
2) If I'm just using my NAS to store photography then do I really need ECC RAM? If so do I need dual channel or could I buy a single DIMM? Does RAM speed really matter for my purposes?
3) Would a Freenas automatically synchronize each drive for me like Synctoy does? Or do I need to use a RAID solution to have any sort of redundancy? I really don't understand nor do I trust RAID except for the RAID that clones the drives. I forget the number. Would I need to buy a RAID card and would I need an even number of HDDs? 3 HDDs is my limit.
4) Should I get an SSD for the OS or would a flash drive work fine?
5) What would be the biggest bottleneck for transfer speeds? I run gigabit LAN which I assume is fine for HDDs. I don't need very fast speeds because my photos are only about 50 MB in size and only go up to 200 MB at most.
6) Would I have access to the HDDs in Windows Explorer under the "Network" tab so I can just use the HDDs as if they were a part of my PC or do I need to log into the NAS every time I want to look at files? I ask because if I'm editing a photo in Photoshop, I need a place to save the photo and if I can just drop the photo into the correct folder on the NAS HDD from Windows Explorer then that will be great, and that's kind of a dealbreaker if I can't do that because I want to simplify my workflow. I can't be logging into my NAS every time I need to browse photos like with my Synology.
Thanks a bunch for any and all answers you guys can give me. If you think of anything I'm missing then please let me know.
I'm a photographer and I have 800 GB of mission critical photography that I currently use Synctoy on my PC to back up between 3 HDDs every night. I hate doing this because it's a manual process and sometimes I forget and sometimes I have to wait 10 minutes while it works.
I also have a spare FX 6300 and 8 GB of DDR3 1600 RAM that I was told can be a great combo for a Freenas. So I got to thinking about building my own. Only problem is that I have no idea how to start. I looked online and the instructions don't answer my questions so I was hoping you guys might. Thanks in advance.
1) If my FX 6300 and 8 GB of DDR3 RAM will do the job, then how much more money would I need to budget? I have a case and PSU too. I need at least 3 HDDs in the thing (1 main drive and 2 backup) and they need to be at least 2 TB each. My budget is $500
2) If I'm just using my NAS to store photography then do I really need ECC RAM? If so do I need dual channel or could I buy a single DIMM? Does RAM speed really matter for my purposes?
3) Would a Freenas automatically synchronize each drive for me like Synctoy does? Or do I need to use a RAID solution to have any sort of redundancy? I really don't understand nor do I trust RAID except for the RAID that clones the drives. I forget the number. Would I need to buy a RAID card and would I need an even number of HDDs? 3 HDDs is my limit.
4) Should I get an SSD for the OS or would a flash drive work fine?
5) What would be the biggest bottleneck for transfer speeds? I run gigabit LAN which I assume is fine for HDDs. I don't need very fast speeds because my photos are only about 50 MB in size and only go up to 200 MB at most.
6) Would I have access to the HDDs in Windows Explorer under the "Network" tab so I can just use the HDDs as if they were a part of my PC or do I need to log into the NAS every time I want to look at files? I ask because if I'm editing a photo in Photoshop, I need a place to save the photo and if I can just drop the photo into the correct folder on the NAS HDD from Windows Explorer then that will be great, and that's kind of a dealbreaker if I can't do that because I want to simplify my workflow. I can't be logging into my NAS every time I need to browse photos like with my Synology.
Thanks a bunch for any and all answers you guys can give me. If you think of anything I'm missing then please let me know.