Upgrading Basic Media Server

[bmcclure937]

What ever happened to the days of FreeNAS running on an old/recycled PC and offering quick and dirty NAS functionality?! I started using FreeNAS in the 0.6.x days on an old Dell system I had sitting around. I fell in love and built myself a modest media machine with a single-core CPU, a couple GB of RAM, and a few 1TB HDDs.

Since that time, I have upgraded the CPU to a dual-core CPU and added more RAM to the system. I am only running FreeNAS 0.7.x but my system is running strong and I hardly ever experience downtime or issues. I do not have the convenience of plug-ins like the new versions of FreeNAS but I am running ZFS with RAIDZ1 and services like SAB, SickBeard, Couchpotato, etc. I had to manually configure them all on the system, which was not very fun!

I have really been looking into upgrading my FreeNAS since it is growing older. I honestly do not have any technical limitations with my current system but am getting worried that the HDDs are aging and have a lot of hours on them. It would make sense to upgrade from my 4x1TB to something like 4x2TB (or possible 4x3TB).

It seems that everyone on the boards/forums are now using high-end server hardware (system board, CPU, ECC RAM, PSU, enterprise HDDs).... even for a basic home media server or backup storage. I have also seen recommendations for using RAIDZ2 instead of RAIDZ1. I understand the benefits but I am not sure if a basic media server would need so much redundancy.

Long story short, I am at a crossroads. I would really love to upgrade my system from FreeNAS 0.7.x to the latest version of FreeNAS. I understand that I would essentially need to re-install, import my zpool, configure all of my shares, services, plugins, etc.

I would really like to upgrade my HDDs during this process but I feel overwhelmed by all of the recommendations for "higher end" hardware and feel that my server would not be adequate. I use my FreeNAS as a media server and stream content to HTPCs running XBMC.

Please let me know how you would recommend proceeding.

 

[HoneyBadger]

The original code that formed FreeNAS was renamed "NAS4Free" after iXsystems acquired the "FreeNAS" name in 2011. They still have the lighter system requirements that would mesh well with your old system. http://forums.nas4free.org/ is their support site if you're interested.

With that said, running ZFS with non-ECC RAM is absolutely asking for trouble. It's like driving without a seatbelt or airbags; sure, you may never be in a situation where you need them, but if you ever are, you're SOL and JWF.

I've said it before and only each person can answer - what's this data worth to you? If it's replaceable consumable media (ripped CDs/DVDs, digital downloads you can get again) then by all means, use whatever you like. But if you're storing family pictures or critical documents, please take the time and money to protect them properly.