I currently have 3 PCs all with media on them, as well as one Netgear ReadyNAS Duo.
Now I just want to create a media serer instead. I dont want it to be active 24/7, but sleep after a given period and wake up on lan if any PC tried to connect to it.
Dont have enough for a full mirroring, so was thinking installing windows on a small drive then setting up a Raid 6 with 4 hdds, so if hdds fail I can swap then out and rebuild the data.
But I've read some people recommend FreeNAS
Not used raids, apart from raid 0, so not sure which option I want/need.
Now when I bought the readynas, I did not know that it formatted the hdds with its own format, so I cannot take the drive out and put them in a PC if I wanted to, the PC wont read them and will want to format them.
Another thing I did not know was that if the readynas unit fails, I cannot buy another readynas and put in the hdds and still have my drives working with all data still on them, the new readynas will want to format as well!
So not sure where to start really.
Do I go with windows and set up a raid there? But then do I need a dedicated raid controller card; or if my motherboard can do it, just buy some pci sata cards to add more drives?
But then if the motherboard dies, do I lose all my data, or can I install the raid drives on another pc? Or is this only possible with a raid card? Or is it not possible either way?
Or go with FreeNAS? But this seems to use some other raid system, from a quick read it seems it does the same thing, I can set up something similar to a raid 6 system, but the benefit that the OS can run from a usb stick.
But then again, if the motherboard dies, can I simply switch to another PC, plug in the drives and usb stick, and we're off and running; or not?
Oh? I cant expand FreeNAS once it's set up???
Now I just want to create a media serer instead. I dont want it to be active 24/7, but sleep after a given period and wake up on lan if any PC tried to connect to it.
Dont have enough for a full mirroring, so was thinking installing windows on a small drive then setting up a Raid 6 with 4 hdds, so if hdds fail I can swap then out and rebuild the data.
But I've read some people recommend FreeNAS
Not used raids, apart from raid 0, so not sure which option I want/need.
Now when I bought the readynas, I did not know that it formatted the hdds with its own format, so I cannot take the drive out and put them in a PC if I wanted to, the PC wont read them and will want to format them.
Another thing I did not know was that if the readynas unit fails, I cannot buy another readynas and put in the hdds and still have my drives working with all data still on them, the new readynas will want to format as well!
So not sure where to start really.
Do I go with windows and set up a raid there? But then do I need a dedicated raid controller card; or if my motherboard can do it, just buy some pci sata cards to add more drives?
But then if the motherboard dies, do I lose all my data, or can I install the raid drives on another pc? Or is this only possible with a raid card? Or is it not possible either way?
Or go with FreeNAS? But this seems to use some other raid system, from a quick read it seems it does the same thing, I can set up something similar to a raid 6 system, but the benefit that the OS can run from a usb stick.
But then again, if the motherboard dies, can I simply switch to another PC, plug in the drives and usb stick, and we're off and running; or not?
Oh? I cant expand FreeNAS once it's set up???
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