New here.. Would like some help & advice on my build using spares

[Iverson]

Ok so I usually only build pc's but have a few old pc parts lying around and would like to use them to build a freenas system but the spare motherboards I have are old and don't support ecc ram and only non ecc upto 4gb. So my question is what is this system best suited to, I also know the risk in data corruption from non ecc ram in a server so would it be best suited to being a media server ? What raid or filsystem should I use ?

I have a conroe-1333-d667 mobo with a pentium 4 -3.0ghz 2.99ghz cpu and 4gb ddr2 ram
I selected this setup as it was one of the best I had collecting dust. I also have 3 x 1tb hdd's I could possibly use in this system. once I have this system in place I am thinking of building a far more superior freenas system once I get the hang of things but for now any help & advice on this system for now would be great and much appreciated thanks

 

[SweetAndLow]

Minimum ram is 8GB, come back when you can support that much. Also read the hardware recommendation thread.

 

[Iverson]

I understand that but also understand older builds support 32bit 4gb ram systems so I know its possible. No need to be so rude, as it says in the thread title I'm new here and I'm looking for advice not abuse

 

[SweetAndLow]

That is advice, you shouldn't build a system with less that 8GB. It will not work and magically one day after you reboot your pool will not mount and your data will be gone.

 

[Iverson]

That's funny because according to other people at other forums ect they have no problems with the older builds on lower end hardware so that statement "It will not work" thats a load of rubbish. Plus I have already tested it on old 120gb hdd's I have lying around so I already know it will run on the system

 

[alexg]

It will work until electronics in your memory chip goes from 0 to 1 or FreeNAS needs to use more RAM to perform a scrub or similar activity. You will then find out why everyone is warning you against it.

 

[Iverson]

Thanks alexg, nice to see a polite response. So even on an older build using ufs it would be useless

 

[alexg]

UFS doesn't provide same level of data protection as ZFS which is why most of us picked FreeNAS.

 

[Iverson]

yea I understand that but as my system is so old it ain't even remotely capable of zfs and I understand the data integrity is better but as a simple server to serve as a media storage device I'm not overly fussed or worried about the data stored as its only my dvd collection and its purpose is just so I can have them all in one place without worrying about scratching any of my disks using them when I can stream them anywhere in the house rather than go get the physical disk from one room to play in another room

 

[alexg]

By the way, if you want to use it as your test system, that's fine. You can also try install it in VirtualBox or Xen. This way you can destroy it, add more disks, created different sets of VDEVs. I took 3 months to play with FreeNAS before I decided to buy real hardware. Look at my signature line, for approx $300 and investment into disks, you can get a nice server for home use.

 

[SweetAndLow]

That's funny because according to other people at other forums ect they have no problems with the older builds on lower end hardware so that statement "It will not work" thats a load of rubbish. Plus I have already tested it on old 120gb hdd's I have lying around so I already know it will run on the system

Old versions are nas4free this is the wrong forum for that. Freenas has higher hardware requirements than nas4free.

 

[Iverson]

money is tight at the min but I have one of my desktop pc's I'm thinking of converting into a freenas server. Its a gigabyte GA-870A-UD3 mobo with a AMD phenom II x6 processor. It will take upto 16gb ecc ram. Hopefully with 6 x 2TB WD RED hdds for a decent enough zfs system

 

[Iverson]

Old versions are nas4free this is the wrong forum for that. Freenas has higher hardware requirements than nas4free.

Freenas 9.2.1.5 is a suitable os for the system as that's what I tested it with

 

[Iverson]

Would you guys suggest buying a server off ebay or something then ? Do you have any recommendations to what system would be best for file share and media streaming as the main system functions

 

[alexg]

There plenty of threads on this topic. Do some research. There are threads for budget builds as well.

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Would you guys suggest buying a server off ebay or something then ? Do you have any recommendations to what system would be best for file share and media streaming as the main system functions

For simple file sharing and media streaming, almost any Linux will suffice.

If you want a modest system for FreeNAS, the Lenovo TS140 and Dell PowerEdge T20 are very affordable. If you're open to something used ... I bought my used PowerEdge T110 for $275 with 16GB of RAM already installed (I already had a bunch of 500GB drives).

 

[Iverson]

Thanks Robert, would this be better ?
HP PROLIANT DL380 G5
2x QUAD CORE 2.66GHZ E5430
32GB RAM
4X 72GB 15K SAS HDD'S

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Thanks Robert, would this be better ?
HP PROLIANT DL380 G5
2x QUAD CORE 2.66GHZ E5430
32GB RAM
4X 72GB 15K SAS HDD'S

On the plus side, it has plenty of RAM, and Xeon CPUs.

On the minus side, it's old (2008?).

On the meh side, the disks are small and power hungry and probably worn out.

Try searching the forums for "dl380 G5", it comes up quite frequently.

 

[Iverson]

yea its plenty of ram, I'm thinking of using this as my file server and building a media server seperate. I thought about what you said about the hard drives and I could just swap those out with sata drives if I really need to, I just need a dell m1015 raid controller to pop into it now so I can use ZFS on it

 

[jgreco]

Not a Resource. Moved to New Users forum.