FreeNAS vs WHS2011

A

Azhar

Fixing stupid since 1972
Joined
Jan 9, 2001
Messages
18,877
I ordered my new media server parts a couple days ago and it'll hopefully be in this weekend. I've been trying to decide which route to go, with regarding operating systems. FreeNAS is easy. Takes 20 seconds to install and you're set to run it on another computer's web browser. No tricks, no nothing. But I've no experience with WHS 2011 (nor the original WHS) whatsoever. I like the drive pool idea where you throw in a drive and it'll act like one large drive pool (is that how it works?).

I'll have six 2TB drives along with a 500GB drive for the OS.

What I want to ensure is that if a drive goes bad, I don't lose anything. Pull it out and slap in a new one and it'll rebuild. I know RAID does that, but does WHS drive pool do that too?

What if the WHS or FreeNAS install becomes corrupted? If I reinstall WHS or FreeNAS, will the drive pool or RAID setup go bad too?

Or am I better off keeping the drives separated ( d:, e:, f:, g:, h:, i: ) so if one drive go bad or the OS corrupts, it doesn't bring down my entire library?

I'm hesitant using FreeNAS also because it probably uses EXT instead of NTFS, so I can't just pull the drives out and put it in a Windows computer if something happens to the media server.

I currently have over 4TB of movies and television shows. I have no desire to lose any of them.
 
Drive pooling was removed from WHS2011. I don't know specifically how it operated, but MS decided to pull it for some reason. I haven't done much looking into FreeNAS, as I'm trying to decide between WHS2011, Flexraid/Win7, and UnRAID.

I'd recommend maybe checking out FlexRAID. It will run in WHS2011 or Win7 - uses a parity system to add redundancy. You can add drives of any size to the array without rebuilding the entire thing. The drives do NOT have to be blank when you add them. If you lose a drive, you can recover from the parity. If you lose 2 at once and only have 1 parity, you only lose the data on the 2 drives. You can have multiple parity drives.

UnRAID works in a similar fashion, but boots off a USB drive so you can save a SATA connector on your motherboard. However, the drives have to be blank when you add them to the array, and it only allows 1 parity drive.
 
Yeah I was reading more about WHS 2011 and saw that reviewers don't recommend it 100% because for some unknown reason Microsoft removed pooling. I'm curious why Microsoft did that. Maybe parity was too unreliable and they were getting too many support calls about it, or maybe they didn't want to pay the license fee to support it anymore. I was looking for other operating systems that can do drive pooling and found Amahi. I'm going to try that on another machine and see how it runs. I'll also give WHS 2011 with FlexRAID a shot, except it appears to cost $59 for protection + pooling.
 
FlexRAID is $59 for protection + pooling, but it does have a 14 day trial to see if it's what you want. Personally, I don't like pooling, just the parity protection. I like to know where my stuff is =)
 
You're a few steps ahead of me, so I'm interested in reading more posts regarding your server & OS experience.
 
Another vote for UnRAID... been using it for over a year now, works great.
 
Will unRaid allow you to reinstall the storage server without losing your data? I'm not familiar with software RAID but if a hardware RAID controller fails, you lose your data.
 
Azhar said:
Will unRaid allow you to reinstall the storage server without losing your data? I'm not familiar with software RAID but if a hardware RAID controller fails, you lose your data.
Click to expand...

What exactly do you mean by reinstall the storage server? My understanding is that if you were to try to update versions or something, the array *should* remain in tact during the upgrade. I'd probably double check that with someone who's actually used it. I plan on it, haven't gotten around to it yet.

UnRAID is basically a modified Linux distro, but the files are kept in a Windows recognized format. You could pull a disk from your array, plug it into a Windows box, and pull all the data off it if that's what you mean.
 
ok, but I'm reading from your previous post that you can only add blank drives to an unRAID server though. That's why I'm hesitating using it. If you disconnect a drive and use it elsewhere and put it back to an unRAID server, that drive would be wiped out, right?

The reason I'm asking is because out of 6 drives, four of them are filled up. If I build an unRAID server, I wouldn't be able to add those four full drives without losing data, right?

I'm going to do some experiment with it too, perhaps tonight.
 
What you would do is do a "preclear" on the two blank drives and build an array with just those two. Then you would transfer the data from one of the filled drives (outside of the array) to the array, then do a preclear on that previously filled drive (so it's now empty) and then add it to the array. Repeat for all other filled drives, then build the parity when all the data has been transferred. You wouldn't lose the data, you'd just have to transfer it between drives while you're building the array. It'd be a little goofy to get the array up, but once it's up you should be able to upgrade versions and what not without jumping through those hoops.

It's explained a bit in the UnRAID FAQ (can't find the link atm) and I'm sure there's probably forum posts on it. The UnRAID community is fantastic. If you're interested in exploring it more, I would recommend checking over there.
 
I vote for freenas. You can do zfs with it and it has "raid" levels built into the file system. Also, all information regarding the "raid" (i put it in exclamation marks because they don't use raid, but a similar concept) is stored on metadata on the disks. It becomes totally hardware independant. True that you wouldn't be able to pull out a drive and stick it into windows if something went wrong but you wouldn't be able to do that with any raid system anyway, even jbod isn't reliable for that. If something went wrong then you would just simply either replace the hardware that screwed up or take your drives, pop it into another pc that had freenas (or solaris, or nexenta or openindiana - i'm sure there are live versions somewhere) installed to get to your data. The point is that it really is very safe and the only way you would lose your data is if too many of your drives died (in which case no system would save you). The only negative thing I have to say at this point about zfs is that you can't expand a single zpool (raid array equivalent) by adding another drive. You have to either make sure you have the number you want to stick to or you create another zpool and stripe them to give one higher level pool. You can however just stick in larger disks in order to upgrade the capacity of the pool. Freenas will make your life very easy.
 
The question turned out to be moot since FreeNAS (nor OpenFiler and OpenMediaVault) will not recognize anything from my A75 Hudson D3 board. All three open source OS will crash during boot loader. I ended up using WHS 2011 until Windows 8 comes out, then I'll be using Windows 8 with Storage Spaces.
 
another vote for Unraid, been using this for years. I also have 3 devices streaming off the server for my movies and no lags as well.
 
WHS2011 with Stablebit Drivepool.

Allows you to add/remove full drives without the need of formatting. If the server fails or w/e, you can always pull the drives and read them from any pc
 
Been using unraid for years, initial setup was a bit of a hassle cause my drives were full as well, just added the empties, mounted the others, copied them over.
 
Time2Kill said:
WHS2011 with Stablebit Drivepool.

Allows you to add/remove full drives without the need of formatting. If the server fails or w/e, you can always pull the drives and read them from any pc
Click to expand...

+1

That's what I'm running and it's awesome. Plus I can run other programs on my server, like Sabnzbd, Couchpotato, Plex, and Sickbeard. So all my stuff runs on my server independent of my other computers. I was in Chicago for work last week, and was watching my TV shows and Movies on my Ipad via the Plex server on my home server. All the other alternatives listed lack the ability to run all the Windows native programs that can make a server shine.

Love it.
 
Last edited:
I'm running WHS2011 with 4 3tb drives in raid 5 (used a raid controller) vs software.

Why the big push for software pooling / raid vs hw?
 
Azhar said:
Will unRaid allow you to reinstall the storage server without losing your data? I'm not familiar with software RAID but if a hardware RAID controller fails, you lose your data.
Click to expand...
Some hardware controllers can be replaced since the RAID configuration data is stored on the disk. Once you set the array back up using the right drives, it should hit the ground running.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top