What OS to use for home file server?

[IceDigger]

Specs for home file server: AMD Neo N36L, 4GB DDR3 (can add more, have 32GB DDR3 not being used to the side), 1x 160GB for OS (if freenas can remove and just use a usb stick), 4x 3TB for Drives Raid 5

Goals: Hosting of Files for sharing through household PC's, WDTV Box Media Streaming.

WHS v1 - does not like RAID, does not like 2TB+ drives, many plugins, DE
WHS 2011 - 64bit, likes the bigger drives, has some plugins
FreeNAS - SMALL footprint, ZFS FS, v8 doesn't support many plugins while v7 does
Other - ?

 

[blurp]

Specs for home file server: AMD Neo N36L, 4GB DDR3 (can add more, have 32GB DDR3 not being used to the side), 1x 160GB for OS (if freenas can remove and just use a usb stick), 4x 3TB for Drives Raid 5

Goals: Hosting of Files for sharing through household PC's, WDTV Box Media Streaming.

WHS v1 - does not like RAID, does not like 2TB+ drives, many plugins, DE
WHS 2011 - 64bit, likes the bigger drives, has some plugins
FreeNAS - SMALL footprint, ZFS FS, v8 doesn't support many plugins while v7 does
Other - ?

I have FreeNAS 8 on trialwith Windows Shares (CIFS). It's easy to setup with the web UI. Lack of plugins is not an issue for me though. It's Free(NAS)! Forums have been helpful to get things started. I get +/- 80 MB/sec sequential read/write on a low end All-in-one Acer tower with a spare 500GB drive. Quite good. Someday I plan to build 3x2TB ZFS volume.

 

[vso1]

ZFS Guru.

There are a lot of choices, these boil down to 3 generic
- prebuild systems (www.smallnetbuilder.com for reviews and performance charts)
- NAS on a stick (install on USB or in combo with liveCD, lot of flavors like FreeNAS,ZFSguru or Linux Live CD)
- Full installed OS on Disk (basicly lose "space" for OS.)

Basiclly all can host a share for Windows Clients(or mac) to read..
The tricky bit comes with additional features you might want.

Homebuild NAS you need to do some reseach in your network performance example:
- motherboard nic's or very cheap network cards can deliver poor performance
- ZFS needs a lot of RAM but little CPU
- CPU is needed for building your RAID 5 array of 4x4tb disks (can take days)
also CPU power is needed for additional services you might want to provide .. downloading or streaming movies (DNLA) or anti-virus file checking.

So if we compair FreeNAS vs windows 7 installed on the same machine what would be the difference?
1) network performance of 10% at best (not worth it)
2) management (depends your taste web vs keyboard & monitor)
3) with FreeNAS you might be able to add an extra disk so 5 disks in raid 5 instead of 4

If freeNAS sounds better .. off-the-shelf NAS devices are pretty decent as long as the network performance of the reviews are nice
I had a Qnap TS-410 without reading review on small netbuilder I returned it .. got money back (so don't go to cheap )

 

[Monkeypox]

WHS2011 with Flexraid