I wanna get a NAS for backing up my files and maybe storing some shows and movies I have downloaded. Is it worth it to get a purpose built NAS or is slapping FreeNAS on a used optiplex easy enough? Also is there a big difference in power draw?

  • layla
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    edit-2
    1 year ago

    deleted by creator

    • drinkinglakewater [he/him]
      hexagon
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      edit-2
      3 years ago

      I'm not really sweating the filesystem too much, but good to know btrfs has compatibility problems with RAID5/6. How much upkeep would you say your setup takes?

      • layla
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        3 years ago

        Well I run a rolling release distro and all that means is that when important packages (e.g. Linux) get updated, I need to reboot. Apart from that I've barely touched it since I set it up last year. Not sure if that's what you wanted, if you have a specific question feel free to ask

    • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
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      3 years ago

      If you're interested in putting ZFS on there, the ideal strategy is to have the OS use its own drive (even a USB drive) and to have the storage drives be 100% dedicated to storing other data, i.e. a ZFS pool. This means you get to totally avoid installing your OS on ZFS - just put it on the usual ext4, probably your Linux distro's default settings.

      ZFS on Linux is pretty great imo. Worth checking out if you have the time and drive space to reconfigure. RAIDZ2 or RAIDZ3 in particular are fantastic.

      • layla
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        edit-2
        1 year ago

        deleted by creator

        • SolidaritySplodarity [they/them]
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          3 years ago

          Sounds good, comrade! My only rec would be to make sure you've got redundancy (can survive the failure of 2 drives) and backups (off-site and regularly tested).