Which NAS OS

[emofrmcgy]

I’m in the process of redoing my nas, it currently uses dietpi as the OS. I’ve been having extreme issues with getting the remote software to show desktop correctly. I’m running it headless, and most stuff can be done through ssh but on occasion the GUI is nice.

I’m looking at openmediavault, amahi and nas4free. Or possibly just redo the dietpi installation and cross my fingers.

Anyone experienced with the above software ? Thoughts ?
The installation is simply used as a Plex media server. I need to be able to access the shared drives from my main pc and a web GUI would be awesome for setup and updating of sw. It has approximately 45tb of storage media. All the guides I’ve read for omv and nas4free say you need to wipe the drives when adding them as shares. This is NOT an option at this point.

TIA.

[LuisV]

I haven't tried those, but I have tried FreeNAS and opted to use unRAID for my NAS OS. I have eight drives, one is the parity disk for a 30TB array. I have two SSDs in RAID 1 for dockers and VMs. Besides Plex, I run several dockers like MakeMKV, Handbrake, as well as a few others including the NVR software for my surveilance cameras. I would assume that to add a drive to most if not all NAS you'll need to format the drive(s).

[LuisV]

You can read more info about my NAS here:

emotivalounge.proboards.com/post/906224

[emofrmcgy]

Oct 14, 2018 21:35:11 GMT -5 LuisV said:

You can read more info about my NAS here:

emotivalounge.proboards.com/post/906224

Thanks Luis. I did follow along with your nas build, I have a buddy here that uses unraid. He seems to really like it. I just can’t bring myself to pay for it. Lol.

[LuisV]

Ha, I hear ya... if you want a free NAS OS, then I highly recommend FreeNAS over anything else due to it's use of ZFS. You can download unRAID and use it for free, full features, for 30 days and decide if you like it or not. I downloaded FreeNAS and ran it as a VM for a few days when I was trying to decide. I went with unRAID becuase of it's docker and VM support... I also felt the unRAID UI was more user friendly.

[emofrmcgy]

Yeah I’ve heard freenas isn’t very user friendly. And the community is apparently kind of condescending..... Just why I’ve read anyway. More people recommend nas4free for those reasons. From what I can see.
I don’t run raid on any of my drives, it’s all just mkv files from ripping my bluray collection. If I lose a drive I “could” just rerip. I’m really not looking forward to having to rip 800+ movies again though.

[LuisV]

Yea, I felt the same way when I posted questions in the FreeNAS forum, it certainly wasn't a nice experience for a newbie. unRAID has a better community. One of the good things with unRAID is the ability to start with one or two drives in the array, at least I think you can start with only one, you copy your data from your current drives and then as those drives become empty, you add them to the array. You can mix and match drive sizes, speeds, etc. no problem. Only caveat is the parity disk needs to be the largest drive in the array. You can always swap out the parity disk for a larger one if needed. For example, I started with six 4TB drives, then I bought two 6TB drives, I swap the parity disks, once the array was stable with the new 6TB parity disk, I added the older 4TB parity disk back to the array as a data disk and then I added the other 6TB disk to the array. You can add as many disks to the array that the license supports. SSDs count towards that number, but optical drives do not.

[ÈlTwo]

I've used Unraid in the past, and liked it (but there was a free version back when I used it). You might want to check this out: The Perfect Media Server?

[brubacca]

I found a new OS recently called Xpenology. Someone has figured out how to load the OS from Synology NAS on PC hardware. Its not easy to load, although if you follow the directions its not super difficult.

I am testing this now on an older core i5 and it seems to work.

I definitely like the idea put forward to get a new drive or two and slowly migrate your other data to new drives.

Good Luck.

[emofrmcgy]

Oct 15, 2018 7:27:22 GMT -5 ÈlTwo said:

I've used Unraid in the past, and liked it (but there was a free version back when I used it). You might want to check this out: The Perfect Media Server?

Thank you. I’ve also been toying with some Debian flavours for my main pc as well. Will look deeper into it.

[emofrmcgy]

Oct 15, 2018 7:56:32 GMT -5 brubacca said:

I found a new OS recently called Xpenology. Someone has figured out how to load the OS from Synology NAS on PC hardware. Its not easy to load, although if you follow the directions its not super difficult.

I am testing this now on an older core i5 and it seems to work.

I definitely like the idea put forward to get a new drive or two and slowly migrate your other data to new drives.

Good Luck.

Will check it out. Thanks.

I’ve been meaning to grab another 8tb disk, guess this just might be the motivation I need.

[millst]

FreeNAS will need to wipe your drives, too, so cross that off your list. My advice, pick something well known and mature (well tested). Picking something obscure means you’re more likely to run into problems and then less likely to get help.

[emofrmcgy]

So a quick update.
I tried out a couple different OS’s.
Amahi
Fedora server
Xubuntu
Open media vault
debian
I strongly disliked amahi, fedora was ok but I couldn’t get shares to work correctly... With a little more work to the cockpit web gui it would be excellent for new and seasoned Linux users. Xubuntu did everything I wanted but using vnc for connection to a headless server was a pita. Omv was giving me issues in the installation and sharing departments. Turned out I didn’t need to wipe my drives like in the tutorials, samba/cifs is working pretty well so far. Once I realized I needed to “enable” a couple checkmarks... (facepalm)..LoL.

So far omv seems like a winner.