Using just one storage device

[WestsideCharlie]

Please let me know if this is the correct sub-forum:

I'm thinking of converting my old Dell 620s Windows 7 machine to FreeNAS OS. I actually just replaced the hard drive in that 620s with a new 2TB Seagate drive, and reinstalled Windows 7 OS on it from the Dell recovery drives. Now I've changed my mind and want to make it a file server, using FreeNas.

This is all new to me and I've been reading a lot and am now a bit concerned that I should really have two drives, not one (except the 620 won't handle that.)

If all I'm really trying to do is use this box as a file server for the home (pix, videos, music) shared by several family members, does it make sense to just have this one volume for storage?

(Can I add another external drive later and use that to mirror data on the main drive?)

I'll run FreeNAS off a 16 GB flash drive.

The 620s specs are:

Processor: i5-2300 CPU @ 2.8GH
RAM: 6 GB
System: 64-bit

Thanks in advance for any advice and insight.:)

 

[kdragon75]

This is a terrible idea. You should either fully understand the risks of one drive and non ECC or use at least two drives in a mirror configuration. Otherwise you will lose your photos.

 

[danb35]

This is a terrible idea.

Nonsense. A single-disk pool is a perfectly valid configuration. Yes, it means you don't have any redundancy (you can work around that, to a degree, by setting copies=2, but a disk failure still means your data goes bye-bye). You still have data integrity, you still have snapshots, you still have all the goodness that is ZFS. It all comes down to how important the data is to you.

 

[danb35]

does it make sense to just have this one volume for storage?

...but given what I just wrote to @kdragon75, this is going to be a fairly risky configuration, even after you upgrade your RAM to the 8 GB minimum that FreeNAS requires. If none of the data is very important, go for it. But if you're going to be storing important data on that server, you'd be much better off using proper hardware. Right now, the Dell PowerEdge T30 is on sale for $329 in a configuration that would work great for FreeNAS. It has enough (ECC) RAM, it has bays for multiple drives, and it's designed to be a server from the get-go.

 

[kdragon75]

Nonsense. A single-disk pool is a perfectly valid configuration. Yes, it means you don't have any redundancy (you can work around that, to a degree, by setting copies=2, but a disk failure still means your data goes bye-bye). You still have data integrity, you still have snapshots, you still have all the goodness that is ZFS. It all comes down to how important the data is to you.

It seems I'm usually the one to say just go for it. This just smells like a ba ideat to me though.

 

[WestsideCharlie]

It seems I'm usually the one to say just go for it. This just smells like a ba ideat to me though.

Thanks for your feedback and I tend to agree that it is a "terrible" idea. This all started with my wanting to do something with my extra PC, and I landed at FreeNAS -- more than I bargained for. But, because I'm curious now, I may as well do it right.

Can't believe after all my reading I hadn't remembered that I need a minimum of 8 GB RAM. So, I'll figure out how to take care of that first, then figure out if I can actually add a second drive to this box.

danb35, your suggestion for just springing for a Dell PowerEdge T30 is tempting, but I think I'm going to try getting my 620 up to snuff and install FreeNAS when I've got the minimum set up ready to go, with two drives. It sounds like fun.

I'm sure to have more questions later.

Thanks!

 

[Stux]

Its a fine enough way to play with FreeNAS, but if you care about your data you need a backup, and that applies no matter how much redundancy you have.

At least with ZFS you will know if you need to restore a corrupted file from backup.

 

[WestsideCharlie]

I'm fairly diligent with my PC backups, using both a local external drive and cloud. With this potential FreeNAS set up, where I'll have redundancy, maybe, I will certainly want to have backups, too. I am also looking forward to that ZFS checksum capability, as well.

Once I get that far, and have set up one or more shares on the FreeNAS storage volume, am I able to use a backup tool, like SyncBack, to reference that share from my local PC, as a source, in order to set up a backup to another destination, like an external drive attached to my PC? Or does a backup have to be initiated from within the FreeNAS environment?

Thanks!

 

[Linkman]

You can create shares, as you noted, and access them from another PC with no trouble - mount an NFS share (which is what I do, small network all either Linux or BSD based), or a connect a shared drive on Windows via SMB (or CIFS, whichever is the current terminology). Either lets you initiate the backup from the client PC.

 

[WestsideCharlie]

Thanks for the confirmation, Linkman!