FreeNAS
I’ve been playing about with FreeNAS at home. Its an operating system based on Free BSD for a NAS system using old machines for network attachment.
I didn’t really have an old machine, I had a fairly new one, but that meant I could boot from USB/CD etc so I shouldn’t have too many problems.
Everything went well – got a 400gb Hdd for it – but it wouldn’t install. Instead, it would boot off CD and save the settings to a floppy disk.
All has been fine for a week or so, been gradually filling it up with stuff. Its on my 100mb switch downstairs so it easily streams stuff to my XBox for my TV.
Anyway, tried to change some settings yesterday and the disk appeared to fail. Then the fun came. Could I as hell get the disk to format and re-mount my HD drives. Finally managed to get it working by instead installing it to a USB pen I’d got.
Play.com had a few USB pen drives last week on sale and a Maxell pack with a 1gb stick and a 64mb stick. Who, i thought, would use the 64mb stick? I almost threw it away when it came. But, i’ve installed FreeNAS onto it now, and apart from taking alot longer to boot than the CD, its much more stable, and wont (fingers crossed) go corrupt like the floppy.
I’d recommend FreeNAS to anyone wanting to run a NAS system. Installing to USB (or CF or HDD) means there is an extra channel for another HDD now too. FreeNAS will also RAID, however you need all the HDDs to be the same size… which mine aren’t.
Related posts
You may be interested in the following related posts:
Tephlon
I have been using FreeNAS for quite some time and I am a really big fan. In fact, I have made FreeNAS one of the focuses of my blog Daily Cup of Tech (http://www.DailyCupOfTech.com).
One of the things that really impresses me about FreeNAS is the fact that this free OS can be up and running in a matter of minutes, opening you up to the ability to store file on the system using Windows, FTP, RSYNC, and more! And it only takes up 32 MB on the disk!
I have written a number of articles about FreeNAS. A lot of it is about how to set up and configure the system to work with your Windows network. All of the articles can be found at http://www.dailycupoftech.com/category/freenas/. I hope you find them to be useful.
Tim
Douglas Radburn
I must admit, its small footprint is something that really impresses me too. And the fact that you can loose that footprint by booting it from cd/floppy is even better.
The only trouble with using older motherboards is having the ability to boot from CD which we all take for granted nowadays. However, FreeNAS will detect large HDDs that BIOSs on older motherboards don’t.
Having a bit of trouble getting FTP working, but I think thats the NAT on my firewalled router blocking it. Looking forward to the RADIUS support that they plan to add!