Newbie help -- spare computer parts = NAS

[bilmicee]

I have an old small HTPC (AMD Athlon 5350 - 8 gigs ram, 250gig SSD, 4tb internal WD hard drive) plus a 4tb USB 3.0. that I want to turn into a NAS

It had an older version of Ubuntu installed on it. I already installed FREENAS over the Ubuntu install.

The 4tb hard drive is full my entire CD collection, my entire collection of home photos and videos that I DO NOT WANT TO LOOSE.


I would like to:

Have 1 network drive of a 4tb hard drive - and use the usb 3.0 drive as a backup.

When setting up FREE NAS for the first time, I DO NOT WANT TO DELETE the data on the Linux formatted 4tb internal hard drive.


3 questions:

1) Will the little AMD 5350 be able to push video's via Plex to my Vizio TV Plex app (plus my other kindle / phone devices running a plex client? Or is it too weak for any type of transcoding- so may be limited on what files I already have can play?

2) Is there a way to create the pool while still having the files on the disk? It appears to be no, but wanted to check.

3) My plan was to use the external 4tb USB 3.0 drive as the backup drive. What is the best setup to keep things fast, but backed up. I assume the mirror would slow everything down too much. Can FREENAS schedule a nightly backup to another drive?

 

[sretalla]

a 4tb USB 3.0.

That's not a good idea... either shuck the drive from the external enclosure and attach it to SATA internally or find another way, USB for ZFS disks is not great (the controllers tend to burn out quickly due to the way that ZFS batches reads and writes).

1) Will the little AMD 5350 be able to push video's via Plex to my Vizio TV Plex app (plus my other kindle / phone devices running a plex client? Or is it too weak for any type of transcoding- so may be limited on what files I already have can play?

It's probably going to be fine for at least one transcode stream... you might consider transcoding up front to reduce the power demand of multiple plays of the same file in the long run, which may also allow direct stream/play on the desired devices, which will be a nicer overall experience. YOu're possibly pushing it on RAM for Plex though, so maybe you will find that there would be better solutions for you like OMV.

2) Is there a way to create the pool while still having the files on the disk? It appears to be no, but wanted to check.

Confirmed. No. Import the disk means copy the contents to another disk which must be ZFS for the copy to complete.

3) My plan was to use the external 4tb USB 3.0 drive as the backup drive. What is the best setup to keep things fast, but backed up. Can FREENAS schedule a nightly backup to another drive?

A local replication job with snapshots daily will get you that.

I assume the mirror would slow everything down too much.

Not correct, mirrors can perform well. (considering my first point about not using USB).

 

[bilmicee]

Thank you so much for the comments.

To be clear -- you are suggesting OMV because I will be using just one disk for the storage, and there are smaller RAM requirements. Could I just run Ubuntu 20.04 and add Samba and do the same thing? (I trued but Ubuntu 20.04 for some reason after a fresh install, ubuntu did not like my password I had set 4 minutes earlier during the installation process. soooo frusterating)

Is there a speed or functionality difference between Ubuntu+Samba (then do a nightly backup) vs. FreeNAS or OMV?

I intend to have the following connected:

Running on a TP-Link w3600 AX1800 mesh wifi.

• 2 android phones with plex (seldom used for video, moderate use for music) -- (dream would be to be able to control torrents with smart phone downloading to the NAS)
• 4 Amazon kindles with plex (occasionally used)
• A Vizio P series TV Plex App (used frequently - want this to be in 4K, or 4k HDR. My camera shoots pretty good 4k HDR content (kids basketball games) -- plus I may find..... other 4k content to download and watch
• 1 laptop rarely used -- want to use the NAS as a backup (500gig HD)
• 1 desktop sometimes used -- want to use the NAS as a backup 750gb
• 1 desktop often used --want to use the NAS as a backup 2tb
• Plus have a common network drive for all of the devices --- will be moving 1tb of data from the often used computer to the common network drive

When I do the math, a simple 4tb HD should suffice. I do not anticipate the need for any other NAS access when the TV is streaming 4k content (maybe music or 1080p to a phone)


Can I be cheap on build a little freenas/OMV out of spare parts or... (use the USB to boot from - and buy two of the same NAS 4tb HD's in a raid 0 (fast), and have them back up to the USB 3.0 drive nightly? I also have an old dell i5-2400 with 8gigs ram, with three SATA headers - but its a sff computer and I don't think I can fit 3 drives in it?

Should I just buy a synology 218+ with 2 6tb drives?

Make some other, newer computer for a NAS?

 

[no_connection]

To be clear -- you are suggesting OMV because I will be using just one disk for the storage, and there are smaller RAM requirements.

If done right FreeNAS is great, if done wrong it will slap you in the face with no way to recover any data.

Athlon 5350 is not going to run FreeNAS and is not going to run Plex. It's a low power CPU from 2013/2014
If you get Plex running without being extremely sluggish you need to make sure any file can be played on client without transcoding.
If you have nothing else to use it for and are fine with loosing any data you put on it then try it and see if it works for you. At the least you learn something from it.

I only have experience with Synology DS1019+ but so far it's good experience. You pay a bit more but you get a pretty well put together package.

Make some other, newer computer for a NAS?

When I built my FN out of Dell T20 with G3220 and 16GB ECC it was a cheaper option than a prebuilt NAS. I'm sure there are some good ways to do a similar thing in 2020.

 

[Newfoundland.Republic]

You might want to also consider a "previously loved" server on eBay. Depending where you live, you may be able to get good deal with server-grade gear.

 

[elorimer]

I've run FreeNAS on a 5350 for a while and I think done carefully setting up FreeNAS on spare parts is a good way of getting some experience before spending $$$ wisely. Most likely it is on a motherboard with two SATA ports, so already you have a limitation, and it is non-ECC, so that is another thing. Plex ran fine so long as there wasn't transcoding. Even then you can let it optimize copies of what you want to transcode so they can be played when you want. That system will use around 30 watts, and you wont save any power by cutting the 5350 back, as you can, to 1-2 watts since it does that itself.

Understand you have a threshold problem with 4TB of data on a 4TB drive, and this isn't going to work. Even with a relatively static amount of data ZFS will complain at 80%.

My first setup used a pair of thumb drives for the OS, one 4tb drive internal for the pool, and a 4tb USB as backup. I had all my data backed up to other locations before I started. So first have everything on the 4tb USB, and then backed up someplace else. Then create the pool with the internal drive, and copy the data from the USB onto data sets on the pool (divided up if you can). Play with Plex on that pool before doing anything else with the USB. If it is all working, then you can destroy the USB by making it into a backup pool, and replicating the main datasets onto it daily or weekly or monthly (depending on how static the data is). Now you have two copies in two pools dependent on FreeNAS, and a third copy elsewhere.

If the FreeNAS box goes kerplooey you can recreate it with new parts and import the pools onto the new system. Same when you decide to move up. But already you have a measure of protection you don't have now, because you have ransomware protection through the snapshotting.

The next step will be to add another 4TB drive and mirror the main pool on the second SATA port, unless at that time you move up to something else. My two cents.