Best NAS software for old hardware?

[ParkerHaas]

I currently have a rather cobbled together NAS setup, using old hardware that I didn't need for anything else. My budget for improving this is practically zero, so I'm trying to make the best of it.

I basically have Freenas 8.04 running on an eeepc 701 netbook with 2gb RAM and a 4gb SSD (2gb swap with Freenas). Freenas is running from an SD card while I have some applications like Sabnzbd, sickbeard etc... running off the SSD. I have 3 HDDS attached to the netbook by USB, one is an old IDE drive placed in an enclosure (150gb), one is a SATA drive also in an enclosure (250gb) and a brand new Hitachi 2tb desktop drive bought for me as a gift. These are on ZFS. I use my NAS mainly for serving files to a raspberry pi running xbmc or a laptop elsewhere in the house, and running the aforementioned apps.

I tried to upgrade to 8.2 and also upgraded to the newest version of sabnzbd, and shortly afterwards I got a lot of failed downloads due to the unpacking failing. I have tried rolling back to older versions, changing the versions of unrar and I'm still getting the errors. I know only having 2gb ram isn't great for ZFS, but until I upgraded it seemed to be working fine for my needs. It looks like I'm going to have to do a full wipe of the netbook to try and get everything back to normal so I'm wondering if there might be something else I can try other than Freenas?

I looked at EON ZFS but it looks like my 2tb drive might not be recognised as I would have to use the 32 bit version (which I have read can't see drives larger than 1tb).

Would love to hear any suggestions.

 

[kac77]

Sounds like a nightmare. Try ZFSonLinux and see if that does it for you. Other than that I would still try to find some money somewhere and see if I couldn't build a NAS that was more robust.

 

[NoxTek]

Goood heavens... you can build a decent NAS for barely over $200, and that's with new hardware. That would be my advice... lol

 

[x509]

Goood heavens... you can build a decent NAS for barely over $200, and that's with new hardware. That would be my advice... lol

I'm not the OP, but I "sympathize" with his approach. OTOH, $200 for a decent NAS sounds like a reasonable approach. How would you spend that $200?

 

[kac77]

I'm not the OP, but I "sympathize" with his approach. OTOH, $200 for a decent NAS sounds like a reasonable approach. How would you spend that $200?

He could go for any of the Zacate or Atom builds and get under that. Likewise Pentium G's would also work for price and features. Basically hardware is so cheap it's hard to recommend not to upgrade to at least something that is more manageable.

 

[NoxTek]

I'm not the OP, but I "sympathize" with his approach. OTOH, $200 for a decent NAS sounds like a reasonable approach. How would you spend that $200?

G530, Cheap 1155 mobo, 8GB DDR3 is dirt cheap, case, psu....

 

[ParkerHaas]

I do realise after a lot of research that building my own, or buying one is the next option, I just don't have the budget unfortunately. I'm also in the UK, so hardware is often a lot more expensive compared to the US.

Thanks for the suggestions though, I might look at buying parts bit by bit over time. I think in the meantime I will re-install Freenas and see what happens. I might also buy another raspberry pi and use that as a dedicated sab downloader to take some of the load off the netbook.

 

[x509]

Thanks for the suggestions though, I might look at buying parts bit by bit over time.

Please don't make the same mistake I have made in the past.. "Oh, there is a good deal on these parts, and I'm sure I will use them someday." Well, most parts cost less over time or else you get "more" for the same price. Think RAM, CPU, disk drives, GPU, etc.

Save up your money and buy when you have the funds to get everything you need for your build. Sure, whatever you buy today is obsolete tomorrow, but at least you'll have a functioning system today.

 

[PointandClick]

Please don't make the same mistake I have made in the past.. "Oh, there is a good deal on these parts, and I'm sure I will use them someday." Well, most parts cost less over time or else you get "more" for the same price. Think RAM, CPU, disk drives, GPU, etc.

Save up your money and buy when you have the funds to get everything you need for your build. Sure, whatever you buy today is obsolete tomorrow, but at least you'll have a functioning system today.

This

Unless you can use it NOW, there's no reason to buy it. Buy a mobo or cpu today and by the time you get around to purchasing the rest of the parts there will be something else out that's driven the prices down.
Hard drives might be an exception if you can use them now and transfer them over. If you don't need them now it might be a good idea to wait though since prices (generally) only go down.