Comments on: Build your own NAS using FreeNAS

By: Lunarpages Coupon

Lunarpages Coupon — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 19:03:49 +0000

Nice article, hard to find an exact howto these days for a budget NAS!

By: Pablo Garcia

Pablo Garcia — Sat, 26 Jun 2010 14:23:02 +0000

jimb:

What kind of card do you have? is it a real raid or a fake raid card? If it is a real RAID card you basically have two choices.

1) Backup everything to another location then install all drives at once and recreate the array.
2) Install a single drive at a time and rebuild the array each time. this will take longer, but if you do not have a storage large enough to back up the data, this would be the way to go.

I would still recommend option #1 just in case something goes wrong.

By: jimb

jimb — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 20:39:30 +0000

Nice to see there are some recent activity on this topic.

I am using a Dell SC440/FreeNAS/4-1TB drives, but I want to upgrade my drives to 2TB drives. From as FreeNAS point of view, If I want to upgrade the HDDs, is it as simple as removing one of the 1TB drives and then plugging in a 2TB drive and letting the system rebuild itself?

By: Michael I. Raveh

Michael I. Raveh — Tue, 15 Jun 2010 19:07:14 +0000

It seems like most of the RAID controllers on the hardware compatibility list are older controllers with SATA 150 – the older/slower 1st generation of SATA.

I was wondering if I will build a Raid 5 array with newer SATA300 drives, such as the Hitachi HDS7210750CLA332 – which are 750GB 32MB buffer – will the controller being SATA150 or SATA300 make a real difference?

I am still shopping around for the controller – as this will be in my home/lab – not on a real production environment.

Thanks

Michael I. Raveh
MIR Information Technology, Inc.

By: Mike

Mike — Tue, 11 May 2010 22:55:47 +0000

Just downloaded FreeNAS, and its awesome! Just put it on a 2 gHz PC with a PCI SATA controller and a 120 gig sata just for testing purposes.

Everything came up just fine and found the SATA drive and all.

Next thing is to order my 1 TB drives.

By: CaselogBembii

CaselogBembii — Sun, 09 May 2010 06:04:51 +0000

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By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 26 Apr 2010 14:13:13 +0000

1) RAID 5 requires Min 3 Drives to setup, card noted here will max at all 6 Drives but still usable as RAID 5…
1a) As noted only 1 drive in any RAID 5 can die without data loss due to the Strip Set configuration written across all drives in the RAID 5 Array
1b) RAID 5 Capacity: # drives x size – Size of 1 Drive (Example: 4x 1T Drives would = 3T RAID 5 – Before Format)

2) Limitations on this Adapter will prevent using larger than 2Gb Array Size, suggest 3x Raid 1 Mirrors for 3T total total size… Remember any HW Array will be far faster with less overhead under RAID 1 than RAID 5 where strip set must be written across each drive in the Array.

3) Nice Setup if you want speed here the only way to get faster would be move to SAS or U320 SCSI, this is what it is a “HOME” or at best Basic NAS Storage System so you aren’t writing DB Data to it by any means but works great for file backup/sharing.

By: Sleeplessone

Sleeplessone — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 16:47:27 +0000

Zooman is correct. The reliability of a RAID 5 when using large drives, like 500GB or 1TB drives is a lot lower. Yes if one drive fails you don’t lose any data, and can rebuild after replacing the failed drive, but if a drive dies during that rebuild your data is gone. The rebuild on a a 3x1TB RAID 5 array is usually in the neighborhood of 3 days, and a lot can go wrong in 3 days. With larger arrays I’d much rather have RAID 6 with a hot spare which can tolerate the loss of up to 2 drives.

By: Kevin Reeves

Kevin Reeves — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 02:03:42 +0000

Reply to craig on Build your own NAS using FreeNAS (from Craig) 13.03.10
I have set up NAS servers on 2 different machines [Dell and Compaq] both have 6-1Tb drives as 2-3TB arrays using the 2610SA Card in a 32 bit pci slot. They work beautifully. One is used as a media server on a home network feeding 7 different clients and a HTPC. Have had every one streaming movies simultaneously without a glitch on a 100MB network for over 2 years.
The other is used for storing/serving ultra hi-res images in a professional photography studio, with 4 graphic workstations as clients as well as a preview client for customers to access images for approval before the final prints are made, and has been working flawlessly for over a year.
So the answer is definitely YES, it will handle arrays at least up to 3TB, and do so under a full load. The only qualification that I know of, is at least 1Gig of ram is needed on the Compaq and I installed 2Gig on the Dell, cause… Well, we all know Dell.
Hope this answers your question.

By: Craig

Craig — Sat, 13 Mar 2010 14:37:16 +0000

I’m wondering if anyone can answer my question below?

Has anyone had any luck with building an array greater than 2GB with this card. All the documentation I can find gives the maximum array size as 2GB. I was hoping to use 6×1GB in RAID5.

Or has anyone had any luck with the 24/2820SA version?

Thanks