Mindovermaster Moderator Posted December 9, 2014 Moderator Share Posted December 9, 2014 I'm building a new server, home usage, storage only. What I need to know, what OS is easiest, future rich, best for my system? Specs: Intel C2D E2140 (I think thats it, the little wonder who could overclock to 90%) Gigabyte Socket 775 (dunno product number, not posted on front, beyond the point...) 4GB RAM 2 x 640GB HDD 1 x 1.5TB HDD 1 x 500GB HDD I plan to just run the OS off a pen drive. Webgui or SSH, I really do not care. I don't plan to RAID. I heard of FreeNAS, Openfiler, FlexRaid, unRaid and NAS4Free. I know what some of you will say "Just try it out for yourself". I want your opinion, not your rants. edit: I used to use FreeNAS, but once version 7, I think, was breaking my RAIDs day in day out, I shy away from it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
AnotherITguy Posted December 10, 2014 Share Posted December 10, 2014 FreeNas or if you are willing to spend a little cash Windows Home Server 2011 (although support for it runs out in 2016) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
+BudMan MVC Posted December 14, 2014 MVC Share Posted December 14, 2014 So you said you were not running raid, so if freenas was breaking your raids that shouldn't be an issue. I don't see the point to running off pendrive to be honest, your saving what a couple of gig of space and the thing will boot like crap. I would just boot off one of those disks and put the rest of that space and disks in a pool. I currently run just windows 7 in a vm on a n40l where the disks in the pool are raw mapped to the vm so I can get smart info. I then run drivepool and the scanner from stablebits. My storage is just one pool, I can setup multiple copies of folders or files if want to have multiple copies so you don't have to restore from backup on disk failure, etc. The disks can be just pulled out and connected to any other windows os that understands ntfs to see the files, etc. Your disk does not even need to be empty to add it to the pool. Its like $35 one time cost for the software. Updates and support for life, etc. Better deal than the flexraid cheapest option. But flexraid does have linux support. Unless you have lots of connections going on windows 7 is more than fine for sharing files to your network. I see 90MBps download from it and 70MBps write to it without issue. If you don't have a spare windows lic sitting around then I would say go back to nas4free - unraid is not free and free version only allows 3 disks. Openfiler while a great option is not really something I would suggest for quick easy home setup with couple of older small disks to be honest. Freenas is a bit of a cpu hog, but your box should be able to handle it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Haggis Veteran Posted December 14, 2014 Veteran Share Posted December 14, 2014 debian :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
xendrome Posted December 14, 2014 Share Posted December 14, 2014 If you are just doing this for storage, and have 10 or less workstations connecting to the Shares, then Windows 8.1 would work fine, plus you can just RDP into it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Seahorsepip Veteran Posted December 15, 2014 Veteran Share Posted December 15, 2014 If it's just storage I'd just use a lightweight Linux os, can be easily installed on a pendrive too. I'd use Debian for it I guess as Haggis suggested. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gerowen Posted December 15, 2014 Share Posted December 15, 2014 Been a long time fan of Ubuntu Server or Debian for all my server needs for a while. Just check the boxes for "File Server", "Print Server" etc. on install, then spend a few minutes configuring permissions the way you want and you're g2g. I ran a Debian "server" on an old worn out laptop that my wife had spilled pop on while I was deployed to Iraq. It hosted a Ventrilo server so we could voice chat with each other, it hosted a shared external storage drive, it hosted a personal website/ftp server so I could store/retrieve files from Iraq to share with her, and I would use the Apache service to publicly share files occasionally with friends/family, and it also hosted PS3 Media Server so she could stream all the videos and things that were on the external to the XBox 360 we had at the time. It ran non-stop for over a year until a combination of heat, dust, and the old coke that had gotten spilled on it got the better of it and one day after a power flash it refused to power on. I see it as pretty easy to configure Ubuntu Server or Debian, even in headless mode (no gui, just terminal), but that's because I'm used to it and I know how to do what I want to get done. For somebody who hasn't done it before, it might be a bit of a pain, but spend a few minutes on Google and you should be golden. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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