Permanently booting from a USB stick

[Codeslayer]

Hi,
I'm planning to build a small FreeNAS station using this board:

http://www.sapphiretech.com/presentation/product/?cid=2&gid=1047&sgid=1045&pid=1662&psn=&lid=1&leg=0

Since it has only 4 SATA ports and I want to use them for 4x 1TB HDDs I wonder if it's possible to install FreeNAS on a fast USB stick and boot from it permanently.
Generally I would like to avoid buying another SATA controller just for the boot drive.

Just in case this is a feasible way to run FreeNAS I still have few question:
1. Which size should I use for the system drive (usb stick) to have enough space for the future?
2. Which amount of RAM should I consider to install? Would be 4GBs enough?
3. Is this AMD CPU fast enough to use the system as a DLNA server and playback SD and 720p videos?

 

[Ericloewe]

How about reading the stickies before asking questions that have been thoroughly answered many times before?

FreeNAS is meant to be run from a USB drive.
8GB is the absolute minimum amount of RAM and it should be ECC.
That board is definitely not recommended, partly because it most likely does not support ECC.

http://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/so-you-want-some-hardware-suggestions.12276/

It's at the top of the thread list, for crying out loud!

 

[Maturola]

Yes USB install is possible and actually preferred.
1. 4G min, 8G recommended
2. 8GB min, 16GB recommended
3. CPU would work but it is on the low end would recommend looking at something with an Atom Quad or Octa core.

check out ASrock AD2550R/U3S3 (no ECC)
or ASRock C2550D4I for ECC support.

Note that ECC is not required bit highly recommended. Also reading over the thread posted by Eric would answer lot of questions.