Are you wondering what to do with that old computer? Well, I will start by skipping the usual… I will not talk about the obvious uses which you probably already know like: "Sell it on eBay", "Cannibalize it", "Give it to the Kids", “Donate it”, “Recycle it” etc. If you wanted to do any of those you wouldn’t be reading this article in the first place, would you? Or other uses that are simply not practical for 99.9% of us… Like building a cluster… That is, if you have more than one old pc, and are prepared to spend more on electricity than what these computers are worth. I am going to give you real no-nonsense uses, which will save you money, make your life easier, and will be plain fun. I will provide you with links that will help you and not just leave you with empty-handed suggestions. Furthermore, I am limiting the applications involved in these projects to the most important, that way you will not loose time trying software not backed by good community-based support.

File server:

I would venture to say that this is easily the most popular use for an old computer now days. Practically any old (p2, p3, p4) computer with sufficient amount of memory and a good hardware-based RAID card can be perfect for a robust file server (or NAS). I’ve read articles claiming that these servers, which are usually built on old computers, are not good enough for the workplace. Not true, it all depends on the amount of users in your organization if you use software or hardware RAID. However, be very careful when building a file server, you do not want to put your precious data at risk. A machine with a good hardware RAID card will do just fine for a small to medium size company. Read my article on how to build your own NAS server. The following are the most popular applications for this project.

Build your own TiVo:

I am sure many of you have wondered, why should we have to pay a monthly fee to record a program we are already paying for. Get that old computer, buy a good hardware video decoder TV tuner card (like the WinTV PVR 250 from Hauppauge), download and install your preferred DVR software and start recording absolutely everything that comes out of your TV screen. (for MythTV I suggest Knoppmyth, since it is the easiest to install). A word of advice, do not try to save money on the TV Tuner card unless are prepared to spend quite a while building this. For example, MythTV is made to work out of the box with the Hauppauge WinTV cards (except the 150). I made the mistake of building one using an old $20 software-decoder TV Tuner card, and yes I got it to work, but after about a month of tweaking and talking in the MythTV forums. The following are the most popular applications for this project:

Build your own SLINGBOX:

Want to watch programs at work? Or any place away from home for that matter? Use your newly built MythTV with the MythStream plug-in. Additionally, if you have Cable or Satellite TV you can purchase an inexpensive IR interface that will send IR signals to your cable or sat box and change the channels, all of that from your remote computer. You can even send a wake-on-lan command from your router to wake your MythTV box so that it does not stay on all the time. If you are not comfortable with Linux yet, there are two other options with Windows that you can try. Orb and Skype.

Build your own CCTV (Security Camera) System:

Worrying about that new crime wave on your city and want to watch your house from work? Or want to spy on your nanny? Install Ubuntu Linux, install Zoneminder and connect a cheap webcam to it. You can even use a USB hub and connect several webcams. Bear in mind that even if you use USB cable extensions you can only reach about 15 feet. However, if you use a USB to Cat5e extender you can increase that length to 150ft! I will be writing and article about this very soon, so stay tuned!

Build a Home Automation Server:

Wish you could control everything on your home theater system? Record programs, dim the lights and lower the air conditioner automatically when a movie starts playing, control your home security system, including alarms and motion-sensing video cameras, all from one server? LinuxMCE is the answer. LinuxMCE is a free and open source PVR/Hone automation system which works with Bluetooth technology to automate different systems in the house. LinuxMCE also supports gyroscopic remote controls.

Game Server for Free XBOX Live or PS Online Capabilities:

Build a game server that will let you connect with other Xboxes or Playstations on the web using XBConnect. The way XBConnect works is fooling your game console into thinking that it is connected directly to another console close by via a network cable, when in fact it connects you with hundreds of players live on the web. It achieves this by having the XBConnect server running on a third party computer on your home network. That third party computer will identify itself as another xBox (or Playstation). In addition, since all XBConnect does is link your console to other consoles, it does not need powerful graphics or a powerful processor; you will do just fine with your old computer. Just follow the guide listed below and you will be playing live online for free in no time.

Build your own Arcade Console:

You definitely do not need a powerful machine to play old games; you just need a good game console or arcade machine emulator and your ROMs. For those of you not familiar yet with emulators, there are numerous places on the web that have good material on them. Emulators are basically programs that “emulate” game consoles (or any other machine for that matter). ROMs are games extracted from the original media and stored as files on your computer. Install your favorite flavor of Linux, load MAME and your ROMs, and you are set. You will find plenty of guides and videos on the web on this popular subject. The guide below is what I consider to be the best introductory one.

Build your own Firewall/Router:

You are probably thinking… why would I want to run a firewall at home? Well the uses and advantages are countless. The word firewall does not mean it only protects you from the outside world. Firewalls like PFsense, m0n0wall or Smoothwall are free and they are extremely versatile. You can run Squid Proxy and have a catching proxy at your house which could increase your web speed significantly. In addition you can create different profiles with passwords to use the web. That way your kids will be restricted from reaching websites not aimed at their age range. You can also run a web server inside your home network and use the firewall to route (or NAT) the connection from the outside world to your server and vice-versa. Try doing this with a Linksys router, you will probably not get very far. Here is a list of the most popular free firewalls. Many more exit, however, I do not want to waste your time trying others that will do the same or less and do not have good community–based support.

Build your own Web Server:

Want to run your own blog from home? Or want to host big files on your website for download?. Host it at home for free. Build yourself a firewall like the one stated above and connect to FreeDNS. Which, as it name states, is free. Free DNS offers a solution to your ever-changing dynamic IP. Your firewall/router will ensure your web server always connects to FreeDNS and free DNS will translate your dynamic IP into a static one. FreeDNS will even give you a URL if you need one. If you want to run your blog from home you are going to need PHP and MYSQL as well. Now things got a little complicated right? Not so, just install XAMPP. XAMPP comes with everything in one package to make the installation process easy for you. XAMPP installation is so simple that you will be surprised how easy it is. In addition, XAMPP runs Apache, the most popular web server in the world, and it can be installed on both Windows and Linux. Some internet providers are not comfortable with letting its customers running their own web server from home so make sure you read your provider’s TOS before embarking on this project.

Build your own Print Server:

This is probably the easiest of all projects, just network your computer somewhere in the house, install your printer drives and share them. This would be perfect for a small office using a workgroup. However for home, in my opinion, it will be a waste to have a computer running all the time just to print occasionally, unless you want to install other servers on your machine, but up to you to decide. It will make more sense to share your printer using an existing computer. A better choice would be to get a low-powered appliance built solely for this purpose; yet these can be a little pricy.

Build your own Proxy Server:

I actually have this running at my workplace. Loaded up an old gateway PIII machine with Fedora (free version of Red Hat Linux) installed Squid proxy and it has been working for more than a year without a hiccup for 200 employees. Ever since I installed it, it has never gone down; in fact I would venture to say that it is my most reliable server at work. Configuration through Webmin is a breeze, just make sure you enable squid during the Linux installation process. I learned that old computers could be used reliably in the workplace early in my carrier. I used to work for a national electrical utility company that had their whole security access card system running on an old dinosaur IBM x86 computer, talk about ancient!

Create an internet Radio Station:

Wish you could listen to all your mp3 collection? Have you ever dreamed of becoming a radio station host? Look no further. Icecast can make your dreams come through. Icecast is an open source audio streaming server.

There are a few things to consider before deciding to give new life to your old computer. You must take into account the amount of time this will take you, the amount of electricity it will consume and the aesthetics. It will not do you any good to build a server if your loved one prohibits you from having it. Also, bear in mind that you can run more than one application on these servers. Since the majority of these projects run on Linux and are not distribution dependent, you can run more than one on the same server as long as one application does not affect the performance of the other. For instance, you can have a File/Print server combination, or a PVR/Streaming server combination, etc. That way you will utilize you server more efficiently. Hope you found this information interesting.

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Lets face it, the iPod has helped Apple a great deal getting the company were it is today. But is the iPod everything that the company would like us to believe? Mmmm… lets see… Yes, the iPod looks nice, and yes it has good sound quality. Is it the best-looking mp3 player out there? Well, like they say "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". Is it the best sounding one? Who knows… but its hard to believe when there are competitors out there like Sony and Creative, which have excellent sound quality ratings and have been on the sound business for years. Is this another of Apple’s myths? Judge for yourselves…

Image by sabellachan

1) iTunes:

iTunes… Yes iTunes… why iTunes? Some might say, iTunes is a great program with great features, and it is. However, iTunes is the only way you can interact with your iPod. Other mp3 players can be accessed directly from "My Computer" just as if you were accessing a flash drive. This makes the iPod particularly inflexible and limited to what it can do, making Apple the intermediary when it comes to transferring media in and out of their product.

2) You can only play songs purchased from iTunes on your iPod:

Apple’s FairPlay DRM protection will only allow songs purchased trough iTunes to be played on your iPod, or in the computer you purchased the songs from. If you happen to trade your iPod for another brand of mp3 player, your iTune-purchased songs just became useless. Apple just punished you for the "sin" of being disloyal to their product. This type of behavior would get Microsoft crucified by public opinion.

3) Can’t play music purchased in iTunes in other (software) mp3 players:

Want to use Windows Media Player or Winamp, which is faster and less cluttered than iTunes?, well you can’t. Again, FairPlay DRM protected songs can only be played in iTunes or in the iPod.

4) Non-replaceable battery:

iPods come with an internal rechargeable battery. Rechargeable batteries are not eternal; they will stop holding their charge eventually and when yours does guess what? It’s over… If you have your iPod under warranty you can send it to Apple and you will get back a refurbished iPod that will probably not even be your own, if you are out of warranty, guess where your $300 iPod is going… yes you guessed it… to the garbage. You can choose to get it replaced by Apple for $100 but that is probably what your used iPod will be worth by the time the battery stops charging. In addition if your battery gets depleted you can’t change it by a spare one, keep this in mind if you need the device to be functioning for long periods of time, like a camping trip.

5) No FM radio, and therefore, no capability of recording from the radio:

There are many MP3 players in the market that have capability to receive and record FM radio and save these recordings in mp3 format. With the iPod you have to buy a separate adapter and pay extra for this feature. This adapter however will only work with newer iPods and will not allow you to record.

6) Cannot use the iPod’s memory as storage space:

Lets face it, you might not always have a flash drive or a blank CD with you, but you will most likely have your mp3 player. Lets say you have an emergency and you are at a friend’s house working on a important school project and you want to transfer the work you created in MS Word from his computer to yours… Better find something else, the iPod will not let you. Again this is due to the fact that iTunes is the only method of interacting with the iPod

7) No voice recording capability:

Want to record what your professor is saying in class or an unexpected important event. Many mp3 players out there will give this feature, the iPod will not.

8 ) Can’t natively play WMA format:

WMA gives companies the capability of using DRM and produces files smaller than mp3 format. For these reasons WMA is particularly convenient for audio book publishers, an industry where this format is widely used. However, since a competing company, no other than Microsoft, developed it Apple chose to ignore its existence. There are however ways to convert WMA to other formats compatible with the iPod but this can become a hassle if you have a big music collection, do to the time it takes to convert each song.

9) Cost:

Yes. In general the iPod is generally more expensive than other mp3 players and the worst part is that competing products offer you more for less money, making the "real value" gap even wider. Reading all the previously stated reasons above you can agree with me that iPods just do not offer you your money’s worth. Again…. you are just paying extra for the Apple name, you are basically paying more for less.

10) Health?:

And if all these concerns weren’t enough, a study recently discovered that iPods can cause pacemakers to malfunction when placed near them like in a shirt pockets. Who would have known that iPods could also be hazardous to somebody’s health? Of course to be fair, probably no other player has been tested for this. And they might have similar effects as well. iPods might have been unfairly chosen for the study due to their popularity. Before I start receiving hate letters from Apple lovers, bear in mind that this article is regarding iPod’s disadvantages not its advantages. I totally recognize that there are positive aspects about the iPod like its intuitive controls, battery charge duration and its accessory variety. The iPod does have more accessories than any other mp3 player out there, mostly because companies want to take advantage of the iPod’s big market share. However, this does not mean that other mp3 players do not offer you the accessory you are looking for. There are many mp3 players that have the FM Transmitter, the docking station and the long lasting battery. Just be a smart shopper and evaluate all your options before investing your money. Don’t become the bait of an advertisement hook.

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If you are reading this article you are probably desperate, but before you panic let me tell you that there is hope, and there is probably more hope than you think…. Even if your hard drive has an internal mechanical malfunction, data can be recovered without having to send the hard drive to a data recovery service. Yes! you heard right, I’m sure you have come across articles that will tell you how to recover data from a damaged partition, you will find a ton of those on the web, but when your hard drive starts malfunctioning none of those articles are going to help you solve your problem, This article will

1) Corrupted file system:

If the hard drive gets detected by Windows and can be accessed but you do not see any data inside, or you get a message saying that the drive needs to be formatted. You probably have a corrupted file system in you hands. The solution for this is a good file recovery software. I’ve tried many, and my choice is “Recover My Files” from GetData. Many of the recovery suites out there claim that they can recover data and they probably can, but can they find everything that you want to recover? Most likely not! This software can. But don’t take my word for it, download the free version from their website and give it a try, you will see what I’m talking about. The free version is a demo so it will not allow full functionality but, it will let you see what it can recover and will even let you recover some small files. The software does have its drawbacks. If your file type is not on their list it basically can’t be recovered. If you want to recover a file with an uncommon extension that is not on their list you are out of luck. Their list is extensive though. Make sure you run the “complete File Search” and not the Fast, as the later is basically worthless. The complete will give you more than you need, even stuff that you erased from your hard drive years ago. It will take a long time depending on the size of the hard drive. The program will not allow you to install it on the same hard drive where the data needs to be recovered from for obvious reasons. So be prepared to install the software on a secondary drive like a USB Flash Drive or External Hard Drive.

2) Clicking noise of death:

If your hard drive is making the common “clung… clung… clung…” sound your heads are probably stuck. This is one of the worst problems you can have since the arm of the drive is not functioning properly and therefore cannot read the disks inside. As some of you might know this is not repairable, at least not at home, Hard drives need to be opened in dust free environments, and by specialized personnel, so do not even attempt to open it if you want your data back!!!. Many people will just give up at this point and send hard drive to a data recovery service. However, before you do that and spend an arm and a leg, there is something you can do. This trick will actually work 60% of the cases, so you do have a good probability of getting your data back. Place the Hard Drive inside a Zip Lock bag and put it in the freezer for about 2 hours, after that take it out and connect it to the computer as fast as you can so that it does not have time to warm up. Make sure that you do not remove the hard drive out of the bag and that you open it as little as possible when connecting it to the power and data cables, so that outside air doesn’t come in and create condensation on the drive. Turn your computer on, look for your data and take it out as fast as you possibly can. Time is key here because you do not know if that drive is going to ever work again. Make sure you do this on a fast computer that does not take to long to boot up, if possible connect the hard drive to an external USB enclosure so that you do not waste time with the computer booting up. Also make sure you know the exact location of your data; is better if you go to straight to the folder rather than using Windows search utility, as searching the drive will heat it up faster due to the amount of work the arm will have to make. Drives usually work for a few minutes and stop working once they heat up. So hurry!!! If after freezing the hard drive and connecting it to the computer you are still not able to access it and you still hear the noise, hold the drive in your hand and, without taking it out of the bag, tap it with your knuckles on one side to see if this releases the heads, you obviously have to do this while the hard drive is powered on and connected to the computer.

3) Hard drive does not get detected:

If the computer does not detect the hard drive, or the computer just does not want to turn on when the hard drive is connected to it, you might have a bad hard drive board. This is the big circuit board located at the bottom of your drive. These easily replaceable boards tend to get damaged over time due to the heat generated by the hard drive itself. I will tell you how to replace this board in the following solution #4; there are a number of places on the web that will sell you these boards. If you can’t find it or you are a cheap bastard you can always resort to eBay and buy a used hard drive with the same model number as yours, remove the board from the newly purchased drive, and use it on broken one. This will probably cost you less than purchasing the board alone. If your hard drive is old it makes more sense to buy another hard drive, on the other hand if the hard drive is new you are better off buying the board. These boards run around $50 each. If you decide to purchase another hard drive or the board alone, make sure you are getting the exact same board! I cannot stress this enough. You can have drives with the same brands and specifications with slight variations on their board and consequently on their firmware, if this is the case the board will not work, so make sure you are getting exactly what you need before pressing that “buy now” button!

4) Hard drive gets detected but still does not work:

If Windows detects the hard drive but it can’t be accessed, won’t give you the option to format it, or its properties. You probably have dirty contacts on your board. Usually when this happens you do not hear the famous “clicking noise of death” noise, but rather a repetitive “rrrrrr rrrrrr” sound, as if the hard drive is reading the same data over and over, or you do not hear any sound at all. It is important to mention that this behavior does involve the computer detecting the drive but DOES NOT involve the “clicking noise of death”. To solve this problem try the following: Remove the main board from the bottom of the hard drive and clean the bottom contacts. That board that you see underneath the drive is actually sitting on top of unsoldered contacts. Many Hard Drives operate at high temperatures, and this tends to melt the circuit board’s coating. When this happens this coating will spill over these contacts, and since they are not soldered their dirty metal surfaces will no longer touch. To solve this, remove the screws from the board and flip it. You will see a row of contacts usually in more than one location. Rub the surface of the contacts with a pencil eraser, just as if you were erasing something you wrote. This will actually clean those contacts better than any other method. Screw the board back in place and try it. (If your hard drive happens to have pin connectors rather than flat ones, disregard this tip and buy a new board.)

If none of these tips work for you and you still want your data back is time to send your drive to a data recovery service, there are number of those on the web, I have never actually tried one, but some of them will charge you a flat fee regardless of the problem. However, these services will not guarantee your back all of the time, in fact most of them regardless of what they claim, will just have a 75% to 80% success rate. There are some things you just can’t recover from, like an arm crashing on the surface of a plate. Best thing is to back up your data regularly. I suggest you read my article on building your own NAS server

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Worrying about a bunch of external drives, on your floor that you inadvertedly stumble upon and kick? Tired of wasting time looking for data, not knowing in which drive it resides? Tired of having to transport these drives from computer instead of having them accessible to all computers all the time? Have you been thinking of buying a NAS but the available choices do not meet your criteria for Data Safety, Space Utilization, Cooling, etc? or, if they do they are not on your price range? If you answered yes to any of those questions or you are looking for an entertaining project, then this article is definitely for you. This article will teach you how to build your own RAID 5, 1-terabyte NAS (Network Attached Storage) using very reliable and inexpensive components.

Components:

• FreeNAS (Monowall, FreeBSD based NAS software)
• PIII motherboard (Intel Chipset)
• PNY CF Card
• CF to IDE adapter
• SEAGATE 320Gb Hard Drive Barracuda drives (4 Units)
• Adaptec 2610SA SATA Raid Card (6 ports, hardware Raid)

First of all let me give you some price figures:

In comparison the least expensive of the Buffalo’s 1TB stations costs $453 (not including shipping, Source: Froogle) and has two 500mb drives inside and is only capable of RAID 0 and RAID 1. RAID 0 which will give you a full 1TB (before formatting) but without any redundancy, so you know what will happen to your data if one of those hard drives happens to fail. RAID 1 will give you redundancy mirroring both drives but will reduce your total capacity from 1TB to 500GB (before formatting). This project will give you 1.2TB before formatting and RAID, it will give you the ability to run RAID 5 which as opposed to RAID 0 will give you redundancy for all your data, which means it is totally safe in case of hard drive failure. In addition, and unlike RAID 1 it will make use of the space a lot more efficiently giving you significantly less overhead. The total capacity after RAID 5 and formatting will be 919GB. It will also have far better cooling capabilities than the Buffalo Station, which is critical for the life of the hard drives. Why were these particular components chosen for this project? Simple… Price, Reliability and Features. FreeNAS was chosen for this project because as its name states… its free. In addition it is reliable, stable and there is plenty of support for it on the web. FreeNAS runs solid but you do have to be careful when configuring it. FreeNAS is still in BETA stage and some parts of the configuration can conflict with each other and ruin what you had previously accomplished without warning. You do need to know the order of the configuration steps. However, once it is up and running it is as stable as any other BSD based system. I will give you the right steps you need to follow to configure FreeNAS in this tutorial. To build my NAS I chose a normal Tower case, why? Cooling…. Cooling is critical for data safety, the more heat you have the less your Hard Drives are going to last. In the following picture I placed only two of the four Hard Drives so you can notice the 120mm fan at the front of the case. Other fans were also installed on the back of the case to evacuate accumulated internal heat and provide an appropriate airflow. I chose a 120mm fan so that it covers all four drives. Make sure that the case you choose for your NAS has space for all drives at the same location. Also make sure that there is space between them. Notice the gap between each drive on the picture below. If drives are not on the same location ensure that all of them have proper cooling and consequently that if a separate cooling source is provided, this does not interfere with the airflow inside your case. Air should flow from the front of the case to the back and then out. This arrangement will provide excellent cooling capabilities for your NAS box.

As you can see, for this project I’ve chosen a CF Card with a CF to IDE adapter as my main boot drive. The advantage of this is that is that a CF Card is significantly more reliable than a Hard Drive since it is solid state, its basically memory, it does not have any moving components inside that are prone to failure. This CF Card is mounted on a CF to IDE adapter which as is name states converts the CF card into an IDE Drive, it uses the regular IDE ribbon Cable and the small power plugs that are usually used to power floppy drives. I addition, being a memory card, it will consume very little power as well as generate practically no additional heat inside the case. And finally, it is dirt cheap you can basically get both the card and the adapter for $10 including shipping. That is if you do your research on eBay and are willing to wait the two weeks it takes for the adapter to be shipped from Hong Kong. You can also get them from a national reseller buy they will cost you a bit more. I’ve read some postings on the web of people saying, why waste a whole computer by using it excusively for a NAS when it can run other utilities as well. I beg to differ… fist if all, what are you going to use an old PIII or a PII for nowadays? And even if you had a good use for it, why are you going to waste hard drive space installing an operating system on your cluster? Either that or purchase another hard drive for your project and we already went trough the advantages of a CF card over a regular Hard Drive. The jewel of this project is definitely the Adaptec 2610SA RAID Card. This card was made by Adaptec to run on Dell servers. This is a true Hardware RAID card, which makes it totally software independent and guaranteed to work with almost any operating system on the face of the planet, since you do not have to install any software to drive the RAID cluster. In addition it is capable of RAID 0, 1 and 5. As some of you might know, software RAID’s restoring procedure can be sometimes difficult, hardware RAID is straightforward and pain free. Moreover, since this card does not depend on the operating system, you do not have to worry about the operating system becoming corrupt, if the operating system stops working you can just reload it, it will see your drive with all your data without much configuration. Don’t worry about the large PCI connector, it will fit well on a regular PCI slot, the reason why it is so large is because you can also use it in 64bit PCI slots. I purchased this card new on eBay for around $82, be sure to get the one made for DELL and not the one made for HP, there are many reports on forums stating that this card will not work with FreeNAS. Procedure to configure RAID 5 on the adaptec 2610SA 1) Turn the computer on and hit CTRL-A when you see the following message come up on the screen

2) Click on SATASelect Utility and then on Controller Configuration

3) Make Sure everything looks exactly the same as in the following screen:

4) Go back to the initial screen and click on Array Configuration Utility, then Click on “Create Array”

5) Press INS button to select all drives and ENTER when done

6) Next screen should look as the following picture, note that I have chosen to disable WRITE CACHE since having this option enabled makes the array prone to data corruption in the event of a power failure. Notice that the stripe size was left at 256K since this is what Dell recommends for most network environments. In the array label you can basically input whatever name you desire, I chose FreeNAS as my label name.

Hit ENTER when done and the Dell 2610SA RAID Card will start configuring the drives, this process will take many hours. Mine took approximately 10 hours. However, once you begin the process you will get a message telling you that the array is available immediately but performance is degraded due to the Build/Verify process. To check the status of the Build/Verify process go to the Main Menu and click on “MANAGE ARRAY” then hit enter to select the array you just formed and then look under “ARRAY STATUS” it should display a percent completed or “OPTIMAL” when done. Configuring FreeNAS FreeNAS is fairly simple to install, just burn the ISO provided in the FreeNAS website, boot the NAS server with it and follow the installation procedure. Once installed, if you happen to get error messages when trying to run it, bear in mind that you need at least 96mb of memory to run FreeNAS. However, this is the minimum that the FreeNAS creators recommend but it is impossible to run a 1Tb Raid 5 box with this amount of memory, it will not even allow you mount the partition. I would recommend 256mb or 512mb. Once we have FreeNAS up and running we are going to Select option 2 “Set LAN IP Address” It will then ask you if you want to set the IP as DHCP, I chose DHCP since this is what I use on my home network, but if you want to have permanent links or shared drives on the client computer you better use a fixed IP. Regardpess if you use a dynamic or static IP, FreeNAS will display this IP above the FreeNAS main menu, in URL format, this is what you are going to input in your web browser to log in remotely to your NAS box.

Example: http://192.168.1.3 Username: admin Pass: freenas Once you log in change the login name and password to something you can remember Next Click on “MANAGE” and add your RAID array to the list of available Hard Drives, you do this by clicking on the round sign with the plus sign in the middle. Once you are done click on the format tab and proceed to format the Array as USF or USF with soft updates, whichever one you prefer. This process will take some time.

Which file system to choose? The best file system for FreeNAS is actually “UFS with Soft Updates (use 8% space disk)” this is a more advanced and updated version of UFS, I was told by the FreeNAS people that this is the way to go. Since, even if you loose 8% of space, the file system will always be in optimal condition as it does not need to be defragged. Fragmentation in a 1Tb NAS is definitely not something to be overlooked; it can greatly reduce the performance of your NAS. Some people will erroneously tell you that EXT3 is the file system to use, some will even claim that EXT3 is better when recovering data in case of a disaster, but the reality is that the disadvantages far outweigh the advantages, besides we are running a RAID5 array which is already secure enough. EXT3 is partially supported on FreeNAS but is not native to FreeNAS so performance will be greatly reduced. FreeNAS does not even have the option to format in EXT3 it will have to be done with a Linux Live CD and once it is up and running you will not even have the capability of running FSCK (File System Check). Only use EXT3 if you are running FreeNAS with Linux as an operating system because EXT3 is native to Linux, but if you (like me) installed it with the FreeNAS ISO cd then you have FreeNAS running in FreeBSD and UFS is the file sytem to use. Once you have chosen the file system, format it and its ready to go.

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