Hello FreeNAS community. I am having some troubles with sharing my server with windows and I'm hoping for some help. Let me start out by saying I have very limited knowledge when it comes to networking. I've been testing FreeNAS on an old computer to see if I'm capable to running it. I'm using an old amd64 with 1gb of ram and an 80gb HDD. I know the ram is low but this is only for testing and learning.
So far I have been able to install FreeNAS 11.1-release on a computer and was able to access the GUI. I've set up the hard drive for windows, added a user, group, and smb share. I can not see it on my windows 7 or 10 network. Windows shares is turned on. Workgroup is the same across the computers.
It seems others have had some issues with windows and I've read some other posts that seem very related, but some of the answers are getting to be over my head. I've wondered if synology or qnap is going to be any easier solution or if I'd run into the same issue for setting up a basic server storage and backup.
Some questions I have:
Do I need to set up a domain in FreeNAS?
Do I need to set my shared network up as a home or work share or does it matter?
I'm sure there are questions so please ask away and I'll answer the best I can. If anyone has some good references to get a better understanding of networking please share.
Thank you for any help.
So far I have been able to install FreeNAS 11.1-release on a computer and was able to access the GUI. I've set up the hard drive for windows, added a user, group, and smb share. I can not see it on my windows 7 or 10 network. Windows shares is turned on. Workgroup is the same across the computers.
It seems others have had some issues with windows and I've read some other posts that seem very related, but some of the answers are getting to be over my head. I've wondered if synology or qnap is going to be any easier solution or if I'd run into the same issue for setting up a basic server storage and backup.
Some questions I have:
Do I need to set up a domain in FreeNAS?
Do I need to set my shared network up as a home or work share or does it matter?
I'm sure there are questions so please ask away and I'll answer the best I can. If anyone has some good references to get a better understanding of networking please share.


Thank you for any help.
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