DIY NAS
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Is it worth it having a NAS? I'm thinking of it to not have to add more hard drives to my pc due to it restricting airflow.
Do you have to use a NAS OS (freeNAS I guess)? How shitty would it be just running windows 7 on it with network sharing?
BTW I'm not actually thinking of buying those fancy hot swappable cases I am just putting a separate computer with old parts in an old mid tower.
Do it. I've been running freenas for years now. ZFS raid. If you plan on using ZFS you will need alot of RAM or it will be slow as shit. And it's recommended you use ECC memory to.
>>51572566
What is ZFS?
I'm using a biostar AM3 motherboard, I doubt it supports ECC
>>51572770
ZFS is a filesystem.
Post the exact motherboard model.
>>51572770
Biostar mother board probably dosnt support ECC. It's OK to use but don't expect it won't fail. I always have my important files backed up so I have 2 copies. And ZFS is a special type of file system that you can use in RAID. Popular in freenas and nas4free. Wiki can explain it much better then I ever can.
Supermicro is the way.
>>51572520
It's pretty convenient if you want to access your shit from multiple devices and possibly locations.
Like, I'll sit on my hair dryer of a gaming computer and add a bunch of torrents to transmission on the NAS, then turn the computer off and go watch that porn on my phone in bed.
Windows 7 will work, but nas4free will be comfier. Don't run freenas unless you're willing to pay for the right hardware.
>>51572520
FFS use google, at least to get some overview.
>>51572837
A880G+
Pretty sure it's this but I am not home so can't check
>>51573054
I've read some guides on google but I wanted to ask people who actually have them
>>51572880
Wait will windows 7 even work for accessing it from your phone? It seems like a feature only in nas operating systems
Also putting a torrent on your nas, how do you do that? Or do you just remote access that computer?
>>51572520
> Is it worth it having a NAS?
Yes. For 4 drives and under, maybe just buy a NAS box. For more, build your own.
> Do you have to use a NAS OS (freeNAS I guess)?
That's an easy option, but you can run standard Linux if you prefer.
Don't run Windows on your NAS. Well, you could, but It's a pretty damn big turd for software RAID-5/6 and all else involved.
>>51573294
>I've read some guides on google but I wanted
yeah except apparently you haven't even heard of ZFS apparently, so what amount of time did you spent on google? Like 3 minutes?
>also using an old AM3 min 100W CPU for some crapNAS
must feel good not having to pay for electricity.
>>51573514
> amount of time did you spent on google? Like 3 minutes?
4 days and 34 minutes
>>51573514
There are 40w am3 cpus
Also does a NAS have to be on all the time?
>>51574228
yeah but you don't have one since you will be using your 120W old gaymen CPU.
No, you can set it up to WoL, which your motherboard might support, but most likely not. Typically you want it running all the time though, that's also why NAS drives are designed for continuous operation.
Anyhow, use google ffs.
I considered building my own and just using FreeNAS since it seemed so much cheaper, but after a lot of investigation I learned that FreeNAS is a powerful tool but you need to do everything perfectly every time or shit just won't work. Even the simplest things seemed like a such a huge pain in the ass that I just went and spent the extra dough to get a synology.
>>51575171
The other big issues with FreeNAS also are:
>you need a fucking doctorate to save anything when your array dies
>you need server grade components and as long as you don't have a server, you'd be better off using the components as a server which runs a fileserver in a VM
That's also what I did my FreeNAS build after some time. Having your own server is so great and you have an integrated NAS with pretty much the same capabilities as long as you give the VM hardware level access to the drives. I still use software redundancy with CRC checking in the fileserver VM and can connect the single drives to any machine and still read the files written on them.
>>51575266
>>>you need a fucking doctorate to save anything when your array dies
Yeah, that was my biggest problem. I was ok with giving a shot learning how to tweak it to a point, but I didn't want to gamble on it when half the point of building a NAS is the fucking redundancy.
Is there a /g/ recommended guide anywhere to the best way to do set up and manage a NAS for someone that has little experience with Linux/Unix etc.? I've been considering assembling a NAS but it's a bit daunting.
>>51574502
Mate, I got a sempron for this
/g/ is more fun than google
I'm still being just as spoonfed if I use google..
>>51575266
>That's also what I did my FreeNAS build after some time. Having your own server is so great and you have an integrated NAS with pretty much the same capabilities as long as you give the VM hardware level access to the drives. I still use software redundancy with CRC checking in the fileserver VM and can connect the single drives to any machine and still read the files written on them.
So what's the alternative if I have no idea what you just said but I'm still somewhat competent with computers?
>>51572520
>Is it worth it having a NAS?
What are you going to store on it? I used to have a 8TB NAS back when collected showz&moviez but now I just stream.
I have a cloud box with 200GB for backup purposes.
>>51572520
I don't really see the benefit for a home user in having a NAS vs just having a desktop PC with space for several hard drives.
Why build a relatively expensive machine that will not even come close to having its potential realized?
Most people will mostly be copying a file here or there, maybe streaming a movie to a TV or tablet. A strong desktop PC will perform these functions very well.
>>51575758
My reason is stated in the op. I already have 3 hard drives and I don't want to add another cage to restrict airflow even further, plus all the vibration and added heat output from them.
I already have parts lying around so why not?
>>51573310
>Wait will windows 7 even work for accessing it from your phone?
VPN (for external access, not handled by the NAS) and SMB/Windows shares if your phone supports it.
>Also putting a torrent on your nas, how do you do that? Or do you just remote access that computer?
If you are running a non dedicated NAS OS (like Windows or regular linux flavors) you can just install and run a torrent client of your preference. If you are running a NAS OS then you might want to set the store drives as a windows share so the client program (running in another machine) can access it and dump the torrent there.
>>51573310
Get any file manager app that supports windows file sharing aka samba, that's pretty much all of them at least if we're talking android.
I run transmission daemon on the NAS and transmission remote gui on my windows machines. Works just like a regular torrent client except the actual downloads happen on the NAS.
>>51575320
But the NAS is all about storage, including redundancy... if you just want to be able to get access to some files then setup a Rasberry Pi with a portable hard drive as a windows or network share and be done with it.
>>51575702
Ok here is a step by step guide to what I was saying:
>install Windows Server 2012 R2 (preferably Datacenter)
>this will feel very close to the Windows you know
>from server management install Hyper-V
>follow setup guide
>create a Windows 2012 R2 VM with the same image you used to install the host
>use the AVMA key (Microsoft page) to license VM in setup
>when setup is done go to diskmgmt.msc and set drives for VM offline in host
>go into the Hyper-V Manager
>click newly created VM properties
>go to drives
>add drive
>pick physical disk
>repeat last two steps for all drives you set offline in host
>install drivebender/drivePool/PoolHD on VM
It's like super straight-forward. Also Windows server is great, since you already know stuff like diskmgmt.msc for example from your desktop Windows.
Also don't let anyone say Windows Server is shit. Especially 2012 is amazing and the industry standard and is stable as rock. (just look at the uptime of my server right now, pic related it's my server)
>>51574228
no, I've got mine set up to turn off when it's not doing anything and there's a wol script on my regular clients that turns it on when they boot.. but you'll need some bash-fu for that.
>>51576050
Do you mind sharing where are you getting the key for WS2012 for the physical install?
>>51575266
>>51575320
If your array dies, restore from backup. There's your doctorate. If you expected anything else, you're a moron. RAID is not backup.
>>51576044
Uh, are you sure you read my post correctly? I was saying redundancy was important to me.
>>51576127
Well I got mine from Dreamspark, since I'm a student. So if you are not, your best bet is to find a student and give him 20 bucks for his key, since only 1 in 1000 will use the key for themselves
>>51572520
>Is it worth it having a NAS?
I suppose. Building a NAS allows you to always have access to your data using multiple protocols. You can also setup a RAID array to prevent losing data when a drive dies, or to improve performance, or both.
With a NAS, you can delegate all your storage needs and operations (sheduled backups, streaming, etc...) to one low-power machine (typically an i3 or a small Xeon with loads of RAM).
>Do you have to use a NAS OS (freeNAS I guess)?
It's way more convenient (WebUI, automated shit), but everything a NAS OS can do can be done using command-line on a Linux-based or BSD-based system.
>How shitty would it be just running windows 7 on it with network sharing?
Pretty shit. Unless you only run Windows at home.
You can't export shit with NFS, AFP or WebDAV on a Windows system. You'll be restricted to SMB/CIFS.
>What is ZFS?
It's a great piece of software but requires somewhat powerful hardware (notably loads of ECC RAM).
It's a self-checking self-healing filesystem. It does real-time checksumming of your data and corrects it on-the-fly if something gets corrupted. It does its own RAID, backups and snapshots.
It's literally godlike, but you need Error-Correcting Code RAM, because if data gets corrupted in RAM, ZFS checksumming shits itself and destroys your array/pool.
>>51576148
redundancy does not mean what you think it means.
>>51576148
Ah, sorry. I thought you were complaining about it.
>>51576146
I'm talking about if there's something wrong with the parity or it dies over redundancy. Cases where your data should be lost. You can still recover some data, but you actually know your way around BSD and be a pretty based neckbeard.
This is mine, pic not up to date.
Don't worry at all about performance in most cases, a single hard drive will get bottlenecked by a GbE interface so RAID/SSDs are pointless except from the reliability standpoint.
>>51576163
It's protection against drive failure. What do you think I think it is? No, I don't consider it a backup. My fucking NAS -is- the backup.
>>51576176
>it dies over redundancy
I assume you mean lack of. No RAID systems can recover from that. none.
>something wrong with the parity
whole point of ZFS is that this does not happen unless you've actually lost more drives than your redundancy allows for in that case, see previous.
>>51576050
Why run it as a VM in the same OS? Also are Storage Spaces worth using?
>>51572520
is there a reason to not use your main computer for NAS functions?
>>51576146
>If your array dies, restore from backup
Then what the fuck is the point of RAID?
The idea behind RAID (other than RAID 0) is that a drive can die without causing any downtime.
>>51576160
>because if data gets corrupted in RAM, ZFS checksumming shits itself and destroys your array/pool.
This is a lie. ZFS is no more susceptible to RAM errors than any other file system.
It is however, sort of pointless to run a checksumming file system without checksumming RAM.
>>51576176
If your array dies, it dies.
>>51576277
>The idea behind RAID (other than RAID 0) is that a drive can die without causing any downtime.
You said it. The idea behind RAID is that a fixed number of drives can die without losing data or causing downtime. If you lose more drives than allowed, your array dies and you must restore from backup.
>>51576150
Holy shit, I completely forgot about DS. Thanks!
>>51576246
>No RAID systems can recover from that
Exactly, but lets assume you have RAID Z1 and one drives dies, the other dies while healing. There's still a good chance when you have 10 drives that you have some intact data across your drives.
That's when the doctorate comes in.
My solution on the other hand offers full RAID 1 redundancy with CRC-checking on set folders with compatibility to every x86 computer on earth for single drives.
>whole point of ZFS is that this does not happen unless you've actually lost more drives than your redundancy allows for in that case, see previous.
There are cases just google, when RAM dies for example. ZFS is way too reliant on RAM hence the ECC recommendation.
And I'm not saying FreeNAS isn't great. I'm just having issues with any kind of RAID really. And when the RAID concept fails, you are even worse off with FreeNAS than even NAS4free.
Just my 2cents. Let's agree to disagree.
>>51576265
>Keeping your power hungry room heating gay-men PC on 24/7 (Ok for winter, I guess)
>Restricting airflow, eating up PSU overhead, heating up your case temps with tons of HDDs
>Enjoy fiddling with software/motherboard raid
>MFW a drive in your array dies
>>51576327
>If your array dies, it dies.
Well, there can still be ways for an array to die without actually getting fucked.
For example, if you accidentally pull the wrong disk or there's some sort of temporary failure.
If I do that on my HW RAID card, I just reinsert the drive and tell it to import foreign config and the array is right back up.
>>51576338
yw, if you have full Dreamspark access, you might as well get Windows 2012 (non-R2) too and use that for your file-server, since it gives you a fully independently licensed file-server VM that way.
>>51576327
no it doesn't see my post here >>51576360
freenas is a royal pain in the fucking ass and unless you are building some fuckhuge array and have the money to buy 32 gigs of ECC ram and the rest of the system to support it, just use something else.
zfs isnt going to be magically better than ntfs for normal use, i ditched my freenas setup for just using a server 2012 machine, but it really depends on what kind of raid you are looking for
>>51576265
Overall bad idea as the main computer is usually exposed to software installs and updates that could cause the NAS portion to fail, it is far better to have dedicated hardware that could take 80% less power than your main rig to perform the job.
>>51576308
>This is a lie.
Tell that to people who trashed their pools and made them unmountable for good.
Fsck'ing non-checksumming filesystems is usually enough to mount readonly and recover some data. Apparently, ZFS pools will not mount when corrupted.
cf. https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/
>>51572520
i have an acer easystore h340 with windows 2012 r2 storage server. works great.
it you're just going to throw something together for file sharing then yes, stripped down windows 7 will work. install 7 pro and remove all the crappy useless features like the media player etc.
i wouldnt use linux for it just because there are quirks with sharing with windows on a linux box. not to say it doesnt work well, but its just easier to use a linux server to share with linux and windows for windows.
when it is time to upgrade to a server OS you will know.
>>51576391
You may be able to recreate your array if your drives are still working and if data is intact, but if that's the case, why the fuck did the array die ?
If you are willingly trying to trash your array for fun on a production system, you are stupid.
I was talking about an array death caused by dead disks, when the storage subsystem cannot rebuild because it doesn't have enough data to do it. Hence the need to restore from backup.
>>51576591
Sharing from Linux to Windows has always worked fine for me. It's all the other things Linux does badly that were always the problem.
It's really hard to run headless, for instance, because Linux tends not to handle problems gracefully during boot, which leaves you with a (possibly headless) computer that won't accept any form of remote access until you physically visit it and bypass the nags about orphaned fstab entries or whatever.
Also, remote desktop tools (i.e. VNC) are truly terrible on Linux, in my experience. Remote desktop tools are important because organizing a media library manually via CLI is just about the worst thing you can possibly imagine. Running Windows, on the other hand, gives you shit like Parallels Access and Screens Connect, in addition to the built-in remote access tools.
For nas4free, can i use the same USB stick that i'm installing from to install OS onto?
>>51576050
Wait why am I running a server as well as a nas now?
>>51576730
A NAS is a type of server.
I was thinking of building a NAS last year, but ended up buying way too many hard drives on the main system for backup.
I thought it would be convenient having a second backup to the already backed up data from the computer plus having the nice features of having all of the storage on the network. The thing is, what next? What would I do with it? I can access it from wherever so that's pretty nice, but l don't travel nor go out without important data on portable flash drives. Building it from scratch is also very expensive, more so when I have so much data already even if a little less from half is backup. I don't know if it's worth it.
>>51572837
>ZFS is a filesystem.
For a simple home server, ZFS is really an overkill and adds undue expense to a build with ECC RAM.
I find a better solution is using Openmediavault, you get a choice of file systems to use and personally I find it much easier to setup and use compared to FreeNAS.
>>51575474
Pls /g/
>>51577049
yea you have to do something with a computer for it to be worth anything.
I have a cronjob that downloads a lot of youtube videoes and add that to a playlist.
Then I use vlc to stream that to my network.
Then I have a rasberry pi on my TV so when I turn it on, I have my own channel of random youtube videos playing.
It takes a lot of data as I can't know for certain what I want to watch but sometimes I just want to watch random stuff.
Home Server > Dedicated NAS
It's glorious having one.
>>51577507
>>51575474
There are two stages.
One is learning to manage a server.
something like freeNAS is bsd meant for simple file sharing and that makes it a bit easier but I would personally use a linux server and make it do cool shit as well.
The second stage is getting the hardware and that can be expensive.
If you don't need it right away, I would suggest that you learn how to use the server first and then get the hardware.
There are several places that provides virtual servers so you can learn.
I use digital ocean myself (you can pay hourly and you start with enough credit to last a month)
That would give you a small server that could be enough to learn how to set it up, how to control it remotely and how to set up cool stuff
>>51577794
Thanks a lot. I appreciate that anon. I'll definitely look into virtual servers before I spend big bucks on hardware.
What sort of cool things would a Linux server be able to do that FreeNAS can't?
>>51577543
That's pretty nice. Still, having the TV directly connected to my computer with wireless peripherals makes most of those scenarios moot for me.
Not OP here:
>want to build a NAS
>Intend to use FreeNAS
>Salvaged a i5-2500 and M-ATX MoBo from a system being thrown out at work ... in perfect working order (neither support ECC)
>Salvaged a 500W PSU - again from an enterprise machine
>Salvaged 8GB of DDR3 (1333MHz) unbuffered, non-ECC
Basically all I thought I needed was some HDDs and a new case.
This thread has me scared.
Will by trashbuild fail catastrophically?
Is a FreeNAS RAIDZ2 array difficult to rebuild in the event of a drive failure?
I intend to upgrade the CPU and mobo eventually, but I'd like to get it up and running before burning shit loads of cash on new CPU/Mobo/RAM etc.
help.
>>51577855
>>What sort of cool things would a Linux server be able to do that FreeNAS can't?
Do media streaming to other devices. Run a game server for your friends. Set up an OpenVPN server so you can get to your own network and internet connection when you're out and about. Torrent shit.
this is off the top of my head, there's a bunch of other stuff.
>>51577980
>no ECC
Stay-the-fuck-away-from-freeNAS.tiff.dll.exe.png
Just go with linux or windows server
I've been debating building a NAS. My problem is that I'm quite good staying within storage limits. I filled up 2 TB around 3 years ago and never upgraded. No single thing has been big enough to justify upgrading, but if I had upgraded, I'd probably be hovering around 6-7TB.
>>51578004
Okay, I totally see where that would all be very useful. Definitely looking into this now. I appreciate the info!
>>51577855
I am not sure if you can't do everything on freeNAS but the interface makes it suitable for NAS stuff.
I am a lot more familiar with linux and you can do a lot with a linux server.
The role of a NAS is to store your data.
Blind backup.
An extension might be to use a secondary backup location or something but it is still a backup solution.
A server has the role of serving (usually web pages) but that means that it interprets the data and gives you a lot of different things.
So if you want something that stores your files, syncs your contacts, calendar, email and git then you want to use a server.
If you want a backup solution and data integrety is important then a NAS might be better for you.
>>51578011
But Wendel from tek syndicate said it wasn't necessary.
>>51578011
>windows server
nice meme.
>>51578201
I see I see. That's great clarification. It sounds like a traditional server will suffice for me. Thank you!
>>51572520
I think it's useful to store images or documents, but I wouldn't recommend to play music or movies stored in it unless you have a good internet connection. I used to play music from my Lacie Network Space 2 but I started experiencing lag during playback, then lately I moved my whole music (it took me 4 days!) to a USB external storage unity. Now playing my music feels great again!
>>51578301
regardless of you use their service or not, digital ocean has a lot of tutorials for setting up a server for almost whatever you can think of.
>>51577980
>Is a FreeNAS RAIDZ2 array difficult to rebuild in the event of a drive failure?
It's a single command, so no.
But again, run nas4free instead. freenas has heavy hardware requirements and is developed towards enterprise environments.
>>51578363
What? Most people use NAS over their LAN.
Also, just use a fucking cloud locker for your music like a sane 21st-century person. Jesus.
>>51578540
So you think that my setup described in:
>>51577980
Will be fine for NAS4Free?
Is it possible to run a small website from NAS4Free?
>>51578818
Honestly, what I do is, I run JBOD (I like to live dangerously) and do occasional selective backups to dual-layer Blu-rays and/or M-Discs. It's a good strategy for a media server. It gives you the most capacity for the least money, and there's still something to fall back on if it all shits itself, but if it *does* shit itself, the data isn't so critical that it's the end of the world.
>>51576264
https://technet.microsoft.com/en-GB/library/hh831739.aspx
>>51578713
>Also, just use a fucking cloud locker for your music like a sane 21st-century person. Jesus.
And then some copyright troll sends a DMCA letter and it all vanishes with no warning one day. And then you'll come here and cry about it and I'll laugh at you.
>>51579111
That's not how that works.
>>51576526
Their description of how zfs scrubbing works is simply wrong. The scenario described in the OP cannot happen.
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/2suurf/how_true_is_this_statement_if_you_experience_a/cnv30qy
https://www.reddit.com/r/DataHoarder/comments/2suurf/how_true_is_this_statement_if_you_experience_a/cntufn2
It's still pointless to run a checksumming file system on non checksumming RAM, but your data is at no greater risk than with any other file system or RAID solution.
