[BigO]

Can a mod move this to offtopic at some point if they want:

Ok title says it all, its upgrade time for me as im running low on disk space. I currently use freenas but doing some research shows that it will not work well with the newer WD green drives.

Ive seen a few topics about UnRaid and i like how it looks, being able to expand the array at any time and such are really good features and i dont mind paying the very affordable price for it.

The question that i really have is whats up with these new drives and do they work well with UnRaid or FreeNas.

I rather ask here then on each ones specific forums since i feel getting a more step back opinion might be a better one. Plus im using my storage for my XMBC so i know that no one here would recommend something that doesn't work well with XMBC.

Ive read most of there wiki's and so far i think all i need to do i jumper the drive at a slight performance hit and that will make things work correctly:

http://www.lime-technology.com/wiki/inde...mat_Drives

The new array i want to build will be made of 8*2tb drives so i really need to get this right as thats alot of disc's and i don't want to have many issues.

[poofyhairguy]

Yeah, you add the jumper and they work fine in Unraid. I have a few, in a single array with almost every other 1.5tb and 2tb drive in the market. They stream Blu ray rips across my network no sweat.

For pure mediaservers, I think Unraid offers the best overall solution. Works great with XBMC, allows you to mix and match drives easily, and is easy to administer. Well worth the money.

[BigO]

Ok thats good to hear, i like FreeNas since of course it s free lol and it has served me well for some time but with all this advanced format crap i knew a change would be needed.

Plus being able to add to my array at any time makes UnRaid worth the few extra bucks.

Im going to DL the free version and start tinkering with it soon to get the feel of things since i wont be building the new one till around march or april when i get my tax money.

[bmcclure937]

I use FreeNAS and think it does a great job! I have used it for 2 years without any problems. I am planning to upgrade my storage soon

I think that different solutions work better for different people. With FreeNAS you cannot simply add one disk and expand your array of storage (unfortunately it is not that easy). There is more planning involved when it comes to upgrade strategy, but I think other benefits are worth it (ZFS).

I am working on configuring SABnzbd, Couch Potato, and Sick Beard on my FreeNAS. Once my entire vision is complete, I should have an awesome and easy to use (WAF) setup!

[gabbott]

The latest beta of unraid, 4.7 beta 1 is now being worked on to natively support advanced format drives.

[BigO]

I use FreeNAS and think it does a great job! I have used it for 2 years without any problems. I am planning to upgrade my storage soon

I think that different solutions work better for different people. With FreeNAS you cannot simply add one disk and expand your array of storage (unfortunately it is not that easy). There is more planning involved when it comes to upgrade strategy, but I think other benefits are worth it (ZFS).

Im with you 100% on this one, i use ZFS right now and dont really want to give that up, the issue im having is getting it to work with these newer drives, i really dont want to buy a bunch of more expensive drives just to have them work in FreeNas now, only to run into more issues later on when these advanced format drives are the norm. If i knew that FreeNas was going to add better support for these drives i would probably stay with it since im already used to it but i just dont know if they are.

UnRaid seems to have a little bit more support and since my data isnt mission critical i think there version of parity would be OK for me.

Also i see you had responded to me on the FreeNas forums as well, if you can shed some more light on getting these advanced drives to work on FreeNas i might just stay but i like for things to be as easy as possible and from the threads i saw, it looked like i had to do alot of work to make the new drives work correctly.

The latest beta of unraid, 4.7 beta 1 is now being worked on to natively support advanced format drives.

I know, i was reading up on this for the last day or two and that is what is making me a think a change wouldn't be so bad since i would have more native support for these newer drives.

[vikjon0]

There is also flexraid that is is free unraid alternative and OMV that is a wip freeNAS re-implementation(?) on debian. I haven't tried any of them yet though. Unraid seem to be very popular.

[hazeh]

Isn't it just a case of ticking a checkbox?

http://freenas.org/_media/documentation:...=482&h=456

[bmcclure937]

Check the FreeNAS SVN notes. The latest version has 4K drive support for Advanced Format drives. They apparently work well with ZFS and are fully supported.

When I say supported, I mean they are working. I cannot give personal experience on their performance, but there are extensive threads on the FreeNAS forums regarding that. I am also in the market for new 2TB drives and plan to purchase 4. I have not yet decided which route I am taking.

I am planning to wait for a deal on the Samsung Spinpoint F4 advance format 2TB drives. I have not used Samsung drives in the past and am a huge Western Digital fan, but I am monitoring SlickDeals and waiting until those Sammys hit the $60/drive again. That is a sweet price for 2TB

[BigO]

Isn't it just a case of ticking a checkbox?

http://freenas.org/_media/documentation:...=482&h=456

Im running an older version of freenas so i didn't see that, i did read that there was an option for that but im tying to source some hands on info about it working out well.

Check the FreeNAS SVN notes. The latest version has 4K drive support for Advanced Format drives. They apparently work well with ZFS and are fully supported.

When I say supported, I mean they are working. I cannot give personal experience on their performance, but there are extensive threads on the FreeNAS forums regarding that. I am also in the market for new 2TB drives and plan to purchase 4. I have not yet decided which route I am taking.

I am planning to wait for a deal on the Samsung Spinpoint F4 advance format 2TB drives. I have not used Samsung drives in the past and am a huge Western Digital fan, but I am monitoring SlickDeals and waiting until those Sammys hit the $60/drive again. That is a sweet price for 2TB

Mind passing me some links, i did some looking around but only fond some pretty convoluted threads with equations that had to be used to estimate what sector to start with and such. That is was actually lead me away a bit.

I know some people want there server to do more but im ok with it just serving up files so i would rather stick with freenas and ZFS if these newer drives are going to work out well for me.

[poofyhairguy]

I am planning to wait for a deal on the Samsung Spinpoint F4 advance format 2TB drives. I have not used Samsung drives in the past and am a huge Western Digital fan, but I am monitoring SlickDeals and waiting until those Sammys hit the $60/drive again. That is a sweet price for 2TB

Samsung F3= Good

Samsung F4= Spawn of Satan

Seriously, those F4s are the least recommended drives I have ever heard of.

[ECEC]

FWIW, I had one of those WDEARS drives in my WHS box and overall performance tanked. YMMV

[jvdb]

I am working on configuring SABnzbd, Couch Potato, and Sick Beard on my FreeNAS. Once my entire vision is complete, I should have an awesome and easy to use (WAF) setup!

I don't use Couch Potato or Sick Beard, but SAB is super easy to install on FreeNAS.

1) install the old version from ports (because it will install most of the dependancies you need)

pkg_add -rv sabnzbdplus

2) install these other packages:

pkg_add -rv py26-sqlite3
pkg_add -rv unzip-6.0
pkg_add -rv py26-yenc-0.3

3) download / copy the latest sab source. I usually put it in:

/usr/local/src/sabnzbd/

4) make executable

chmod -R 755 /usr/local/src/sabnzbd/

5) create alias for python binary

ln -s /usr/local/bin/python /bin/python

6) run sab once so it'll create your local folder and .ini file

/usr/local/src/sabnzbd/SABnzbd.py

7) edit ini so you can access from somewhere other than localhost:

vi ~/.sabnzbd/sabnzbd.ini

8) add startup command in freenas gui

System -> Advanced -> Command scripts -> Add -> PostInit

/usr/local/src/sabnzbd/SABnzbd.py -d -f /usr/home/UNAME_HERE/.sabnzbd/sabnzbd.ini

[jvdb]

Check the FreeNAS SVN notes. The latest version has 4K drive support for Advanced Format drives. They apparently work well with ZFS and are fully supported.

My person experience is that they work just fine jumpered w/o 4k drive support in FreeNAS (just slower than EADS drives).

[jvdb]

Mind passing me some links, i did some looking around but only fond some pretty convoluted threads with equations that had to be used to estimate what sector to start with and such. That is was actually lead me away a bit.

Probably the threads you already found..

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freena...=65&t=5843

http://sourceforge.net/apps/phpbb/freena...=97&t=6847

I haven't researched this in 6+ mos., many of the info is buried pages deep in the ZFS ( only! ) forum..