Prebuild Questions

[henry1006]

Hi, I have been coming back to FreeNAS back and forth weekly as I plan to build a home network system cheap without buying expensive NAS hardwares(aftermarket systems). Here are the devices at my house.
My room: Master desktop computer(most important one & best one), Professional Laptop (for editing and others that need >storage
Siblings room: One desktop, 2x laptop
House-mate: Desktop
Living Room: One HTPC
Guess Room: One laptop
As you can see, all of these I want to connect to my new NAS build for easy access. Here are the questions....

1) Should I go with ZFS or UFS, there will be data going into the NAS daily?

2) Should I go with a premium 80+ Bronze or Gold PSU for 24/7 usage, power fee is ok to cheap?

3) Am I required to have a RAID card even if I might not be doing it?

4) Am I required to get a Network card when I can use onboard network?

 

[Nindustries]

1) Should I go with ZFS or UFS, there will be data going into the NAS daily?
It depends on what you want, but as you're posting in the FreeNAS forums I suppose you want ZFS to enjoy all the functionality of freenas. (and ZFS!)

2) Should I go with a premium 80+ Bronze or Gold PSU for 24/7 usage, power fee is ok to cheap?
Personally, I would just look at the prices I can get for a bronze and compare them with the gold one.
Calculate at what Wattage your system idles (it will be idling the most of the time after all), and make sure your PSU is in an efficiency zone here. (search how to choose psu here in the forums)

3) Am I required to have a RAID card even if I might not be doing it?
No, as long as there are enough SATA ports on your motherboard, you dont need any card. If you do need one, you could buy a M1015 and flash it to IT mode. (costs around 100 euro)
The point of ZFS is that all 'RAID stuff' is done in the operating system, and not by a raid card.

4) Am I required to get a Network card when I can use onboard network?
No, just take a motherboard with dual onboard NICs and you'll be fine.

 

[gpsguy]

Start by reading the "So you want some hardware suggestions" thread, for answers to your questions. Also read cyberjock's guide. And, study the manual.

 

[henry1006]

Ok. Additionally, say if I have a 1tb filled hdd and I want to do something with it. Is it ok to just pull it out of the configuration and plug it into my computer without configuring Anything. Is it possible to do that with configuring without losing data.

 

[Michael Wulff Nielsen]

That is not possible. FreeNAS runs the ZFS filesystem which is a very advanced thing that Windows/Mac doesn't understand out of the box.

And you should never pull disks from your nas unless you are replacing a disk