Running FreeNas on a SD Card

[Palladini]

I do understand you can run FreeNas on a SD Card, one that is 8 GB.
1) can the SD Card be installed in USB SD Card Reader?
2) when installing, should you have any hard drives in the computer?
I intend to get ASUS P6P87 Motherboard, install an I5 Intel Processor, 8 GB RAM, 500 Watt PSU and 4 or 5 2 TB Hard Drive and run them in a RAID 5 mode. Will this be good setup for a NAS?

 

[danb35]

I do understand you can run FreeNas on a SD Card, one that is 8 GB.

You understand incorrectly.

I intend to get ASUS P6P87 Motherboard, install an I5 Intel Processor, 8 GB RAM, 500 Watt PSU and 4 or 5 2 TB Hard Drive and run them in a RAID 5 mode. Will this be good setup for a NAS?

No, it won't, or at least not for FreeNAS.

 

[BigDave]

^^^^^^^^^^^ +1 ^^^^^^^^^^^^
You need to do some research here in this forum. Start with the Resources Section
and the Recommended Hardware thread...

 

[danb35]

You understand incorrectly.

Actually, I need to correct myself here. You can run FreeNAS from an SD card, but you shouldn't. USB flash drive, CF card (nearly extinct by now), SATA DOM, or SSD are the recommended boot devices.

 

[joeschmuck]

The SD Card is a terrible device to run any OS from. It is prone to failure. You can likely do an internet search as to why an SD Card is a poor choice and read all the details and scientific rationale, or just take our advice and use darn near anything else.

Also as my friends have stated above, you should do a bit more reading about what FreeNAS is and it's hardware requirements. We also do not use RAID 5 here but we have something similar, so try to brush up on the terminology as well.

When you are ready to take another shot at listing system hardware, also include your use case so we all fully understand what you expect to do with FreeNAS and the storage capacity you will need for about 3 to 5 years (best guess). This stuff all matters.

 

[danb35]

Also as my friends have stated above,

Friends? I thought we were deadly enemies!

 

[joeschmuck]

Friends? I thought we were deadly enemies!

 

[BigDave]

Friends? I thought we were deadly enemies!

He was talking about me :p

 

[Palladini]

I have an old ASrock motherboard with an AMD chip and 2 RAM spots, would that work?

 

[danb35]

Depends a bit on the motherboard and AMD chip, but I'd say it's doubtful.

Edit: The Hardware Recommendations link has already been posted up-thread, but a little background might be helpful. Several years back, a software product called FreeNAS was created. It could run with very minimal hardware, and resulted in a lot of blog posts and YouTube videos on the subject of "how to turn your i386 space heater into a NAS". After a while, development on that product languished (it's subsequently been reincarnated as NAS4Free, but its hardware requirements have grown too). Some years later (but still a number of years ago), iXSystems bought the FreeNAS name and wrote a completely different software product, still a NAS, but with no intent that it be run on old, castoff hardware. FreeNAS now requires reasonably-modern server-grade hardware in order to give a safe, stable place for your data to live. If you're wanting to run a NAS on whatever old hardware you have lying around, FreeNAS probably isn't for you. The best buy today, at least in the US, for a small server is the Proliant ML10 (TigerDirect should give me commissions for as many times as I've recommended them here recently), but I'm not sure if they ship to .ca. US$200 for that machine, at least 4 GB extra RAM (I'd recommend at least 8 GB extra, though), and add your drives.

 

[joeschmuck]

I recall the story being slightly different...

FreeNAS .7 was on the streets and somehow iXsystems got the rights to the name (I have no idea how they did it but they did). This meant that FreeNAS .7 was renamed NAS4Free (by legal force). All of this happened during late 2010 and early 2011. Oh so much confusion for people from the previous FreeNAS community. Anyway we started with FreeNAS 8.0 which added to the confusion as well since it look like an incremental upgrade from .7, but of course it wasn't. In the 8.x days a person could easily modify and compile FreeNAS. I did a ton of it and influenced the versions with minidlna built in.

But both NAS4Free and FreeNAS hardware requirements have grown. If you just want a simple NAS using old hardware you could grab an old copy of FreeNAS or NAS4Free but any current versions have more rigid minimum requirements. The ML10 recommended above is a great deal, just add at least 4GB RAM to meet the minimum specs, however as suggested, Add more than that if you are planning to use extra features.

 

[danb35]

FreeNAS .7 was on the streets and somehow iXsystems got the rights to the name (I have no idea how they did it but they did). This meant that FreeNAS .7 was renamed NAS4Free (by legal force).

I'm 99% sure that FreeNAS development had, if not died, at least gone into suspended animation by the time iX acquired the name. Though Wikipedia seems to give a slightly more nuanced interpretation.

 

[joeschmuck]

Good link. Timelines seem to match what I recall. See and I was doing it from memory.