Will Lenovo with external HDD FreeNAS?

[Amp9k]

Hey,

I have been looking for a good NAS solution for some time now. And I think I finally found the best thing for me.

I got this mini lenovo desktop PC with an i5 and 8gb ram, that should be more than enough power for a plex server. But.. The thing is the size of a HDD, so there won't be any room for adding additional internal storage. So my question is, would an external HDD do the job, and if yes, which one would you recommend?

 

[m0nkey_]

would an external HDD do the job, and if yes, which one would you recommend?

FreeNAS and USB usually don't go together for a reason, it will fail on you and you will lose data. There are far too many examples on this forum where USB has been used and the pool is irreparably lost.

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: external drives over USB are the least reliable way to use FreeNAS. Just because you can't doesn't mean you should.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[Amp9k]

Short answer: yes.

Long answer: external drives over USB are the least reliable way to use FreeNAS. Just because you can't doesn't mean you should.

Cheers,
Matt

Alright. What would you say I could expect out of a NAS with an external hard-drive? I'm not looking for super speeds, or 100% uptime, just fast enough for the latest Avengers movie, and 98% uptime would be fine for me.

 

[Chris Moore]

Hey,

I have been looking for a good NAS solution for some time now. And I think I finally found the best thing for me.

I got this mini lenovo desktop PC with an i5 and 8gb ram, that should be more than enough power for a plex server. But.. The thing is the size of a HDD, so there won't be any room for adding additional internal storage. So my question is, would an external HDD do the job, and if yes, which one would you recommend?

Others have tried to use USB for storage pools and they can't stay operational because of read / write delay over the USB interface. It will not work reliably. We have seen it fail before. This is a bad idea. Please don't do it. Just use Linux and a single drive. No point in using FreeNAS in a hardware configuration that is just not going to work.

 

[Chris Moore]

If you want to use FreeNAS, read the resources and ask what hardware to use instead of trying to use the random junk you already have:

Hardware Requirements
http://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/

Did you read the manual?
http://doc.freenas.org/11/freenas.html

Updated Forum Rules 4/11/17
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/updated-forum-rules-4-11-17.45124/

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Why not to use RAID-5 or RAIDz1
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

FreeNAS® Quick Hardware Guide
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/freenas®-quick-hardware-guide.7/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

 

[Amp9k]

Others have tried to use USB for storage pools and they can't stay operational because of read / write delay over the USB interface. It will not work reliably. We have seen it fail before. This is a bad idea. Please don't do it. Just use Linux and a single drive. No point in using FreeNAS in a hardware configuration that is just not going to work.

Okay, so my best option would be to exchange the current internal SSD with a 24/7 rated HDD, and boot FreeNAS from a USB right?

 

[Chris Moore]

Okay, so my best option would be to exchange the current internal SSD with a 24/7 rated HDD, and boot FreeNAS from a USB right?

I suppose that could be an option but it puts you on a single disk for your storage pool. This hardware is simply not a proper NAS, by an standard, because there is no storage redundancy, and it is really not good for FreeNAS as it does not have ECC memory. I love FreeNAS so much that I would rather have you use Linux than have you use FreeNAS and have a failure that you blame on FreeNAS.

 

[danb35]

Okay, so my best option would be to exchange the current internal SSD with a 24/7 rated HDD, and boot FreeNAS from a USB right?

If you want a decent, reliable NAS, your best option is to use different hardware entirely. If you're only concerned with serving your media, and don't really care about reliability, availability, or data integrity, there are many other less-demanding NAS packages out there. OpenMediaVault is one that seems to get some positive feedback.