What file system should my data be on and more?

[marrjam]

Greetings,

I currently using a windows 7 box as a server. I have 3 separate hard drives, 1st drive has a 30 gb primary partition for windows 7 and the rest of the drive(s) is/are extended partitions formatted NFTS.

Is there a format other than NFTS that I should have all my data stored on so it will be accessible to other machines than windows?

I'm was thinking I'd wipe the primary partition and install FreeNAS on the primary, but then I read in this forum about FreeNAS running off a USB flash drive? Is this better than running it off the hard drive?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I want to try something other than windows 7, which sometimes slows to a crawl.

Thanks

 

[jgreco]

Greetings,

I currently using a windows 7 box as a server. I have 3 separate hard drives, 1st drive has a 30 gb primary partition for windows 7 and the rest of the drive(s) is/are extended partitions formatted NFTS.

Is there a format other than NFTS that I should have all my data stored on so it will be accessible to other machines than windows?

I'm was thinking I'd wipe the primary partition and install FreeNAS on the primary, but then I read in this forum about FreeNAS running off a USB flash drive? Is this better than running it off the hard drive?

Sorry if these are stupid questions, I'm trying to wrap my head around this. I want to try something other than windows 7, which sometimes slows to a crawl.

Thanks

FreeNAS 8 expects to be installed on a flash device of some sort, and will then allow you to use your hard drives for storage. It doesn't want to be installed on a hard drive, and if you do, it's not designed to allow you to store data on the drive it boots from.

To most effectively transition to FreeNAS, back up your Windows 7 fileserver's files to some other media, and install FreeNAS. If you have a lot of memory, ZFS is great for storage. A NAS device typically offers storage to the network by offering individual files through various standard protocols (SMB, NFS, etc) and the choice of filesystem is dictated by what the NAS supports (and supports well). For example, FreeNAS supports ZFS and FFS/UFS. Not NTFS. FreeNAS will serve files to a Windows box just fine and dandy from a ZFS or FFS/UFS filesystem... it's not serving the filesystem, but rather the files ON the filesystem. Therefore don't get all hung up on NTFS.

From a user's perspective, a NAS is just supposed to look like a place to dump files. It's never actually that simple when implementing it, of course, but it helps to keep your eye on that goal as you're thinking about the technology.

 

[marrjam]

OOOKKKay

Thanks for the reply, I just got done reading the documentation before reading your reply.

Installing to a usb flash drive seems like it makes sense now. I guess I'll have to upgrade my memory to make full use of FreeNAS.

I'm a little intimidated by all the different settings, but I guess that is what a forum is for.