NAS - FreeNAS, LMCE or something else?

[Esperanto]

I run NAS4free with Raid-Z2 (6 disks) and the os boots from an usb stick.

[theteju]

I would Stay with Linuxmce. 
I have 80gb hard drive on which core/hybrid system installed.
I have another 1 TB hard drive formatted as xfs (I believe) (I dont remember) which is partitioned as LMCE directory structure. If needed I can just upgrade the towercase that can hold more drives. but I think, for now LMCE fulfills all needs for directing media with much less system requirements. (Except Mediatomb can be more user friendly )
If you need to reinstall LMCE that goes on 80gb but the media drive would be plug in play
As far as I understand, Core does not need more powerful system, its your MD needs all juice.

And that is pretty true,, as I run my core on old dell poweredge S420 with pentium single core processor with only 2 gb ram. and it works. except with slow orbiter regen

[Esperanto]

I would not rely on an internal drive atm. I also have an internal drive in linuxmce but the 12.04 system does not recognize internal drives atm: http://trac.linuxmce.org/trac/ticket/2140

[Marie.O]

Thankfully, my internal drives are recognized in my 1204 system. Otherwise SWMBO would kill me.

[Dap-P]

I find the synology software very good. But the hardware is very expensive imho.

Recently i migrated my FreeNAS server to http://xpenology.com/ which is a x64 variant of the Synology software.
You can run this on any 64-bit PC, and in my opinion works perfectly.

Anton.

[totallymaxed]

I'm looking for a reliable and easy way to store my data so that I can access it from any of the devices in my home while automatically backing up data. I'm in the process of learning about FreeNAS and I like what I see but I'm having a hard time determining if it's a good fit for me.

In order of priority, this is what I'm looking to do:
Critical Data Storage – I currently have ~30GB of data that I would consider critical and irreplaceable. Normally new content is added rather than changed. I currently use a combination of Dropbox and google drive to protect that data but I would prefer something a bit more seamless.

Replaceable Data Storage – The bulk of my content is recorded TV shows or movies for LMCE. That content is generally removed after consumption. It is not irreplaceable but would be a PITA if lost.

Usenet Download Server – I've recently started using sabnzbd, couchpotato and sickbeard on an old P4. I can see myself digging more into them and expanding into more related applications which are available as FreeNAS plugins. I suspect that if I didn't do FreeNAS that I'd be able to run these applications on my LMCE core. (right?)

I like the RAIDZ2 reliability in FreeNAS but considering my limited needs, it seems like it will be overkill...plus the cost of a FreeNAS box with four matching HDs is significant.

What options should I be looking into?

Thank you,
B34N

We used to build & sell our own FreeNAS based NAS's but eventually we realised that it just didn't make commercial sense (and it wasn't very 'Green' either) and now we just recommend that our installers purchased a respected, branded commercial NAS ie something like a Synology. We also always recommend using raided NAS's over internal hard drives as we've found this to be the most reliable solution by far. As posde says backing up your stuff is essential and rsync is almost universally the solution for doing that even in small commercial NAS's these days.

However...if your building your own system then its very likely that building your own NAS too is something you'd like to do. So I would say going FreeNAS etc on your own hardware in that case looks like a nice solution still (commercial rules don't apply in this case!)

All the best

Andy