Linux Format forums

Nuke · Posted: Tue Jul 24, 2012 11:54 pm Post subject: FreeNAS in LXF 161

I was brought up short when Mike Saunders said for our file server we should put FreeNAS on a 2Gb USB stick and our data on the hard drive, and "if you have two hard drives you can install FreeNAS on one and use the other for storage, but that can be wasteful". What? Can't BSD/FreeNAS use partitions? Maybe not, maybe I've heard that before.

But anyway, two drives would be wasteful of what? A drive? I thought we are talking about using an old system unit; so using the original (ie smallish) HD for the system and putting in a shiny new terabyte HD for the data would probably be ideal - especially as the alternative might be to discard it.

Anyway, I have a boxful of old HDs in the attic from past upgrades, ranging from about 1Gb up (I only recently threw away several even smaller ones down to 105Mb!). Am I the only guy who keeps such stuff? These HDs are crying out to be used like this.

Moreover, a USB stick permanently "sticking" out the front of a system unit of a "secure" server? Waiting for the cat to walk past and knock it out? Not a good idea IMHO!
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Dutch_Master · LXF regular Joined: Tue Mar 27, 2007 2:49 am Posts: 2353

Calm down, Mike was probably in some Bierstube when he wrote that Wink

I too have some old and small disks, but I now have no real need for them, as there's no IDE controller on new main boards these days! Confused

However, with some clever hardware addressing one could use these drives in microcontroller environments Wink

Nuke · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 8:43 am Post subject:

M-Saunders · Moderator Joined: Mon Apr 11, 2005 1:14 pm Posts: 2881

Hi,

FreeBSD can partition hard drives, of course. But the FreeNAS installer doesn't provide you options to do that. In other words, if you choose to install FreeNAS onto a hard drive, it takes over all of that drive, which is wasteful if it's 1TB and the FreeNAS installation only uses a couple of GB. From the official docs:

"While technically you can install FreeNAS onto a hard drive, this is discouraged as you will lose the storage capacity of the drive. In other words, the operating system will take over the drive and will not allow you to store data on it, regardless of the size of the drive."

Mike

wyliecoyoteuk · Posted: Wed Jul 25, 2012 12:26 pm Post subject:

You can get internal usb cables, or ones with Faceplates for the rear of the pc, and remove the faceplate, and most mobos have rear USB ports anyway.
As for the sata/ide issue, there are cheap IDE/SATA convertors, or even USB/SATA ones, and we are talking really cheap here, but they work.
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