Comments on: Convert Old PC To Network Attached Storage with FreeNas

By: the echothis blog » Adventures in home data backups: Part 1 – FreeNAS to the rescue!

Thu, 22 Oct 2009 13:39:46 +0000

[...] burn an ISO of FreeNAS. The official FreeNAS site is a more extensive resource but in my experience was a [...]

By: Ant1

Ant1 — Thu, 13 Aug 2009 13:33:57 +0000

Re: Energy, I have to say that is top of mind. In Europe electricity prices have been tremendously volatile with a close to 60% increase a year ago in the UK for example.

That said, it might be conceivable to do something like the following:
- have down-times i.e. when you sleep and automate a shut-down script
- then – to wake-up in the morning – one could use the BIOS wake-up with an auto-login script
- then it could be put in hibernate with a wake-on-lan.
- yet another idea is that if this is a laptop a timer could be put on the plug such that the battery charges and discharges effectively halving the electricity usage..
- finally, if it were possible to have FREENAS run as a virtual machine on a machine that is actually doing something of use, it would get rid of the need for a redundant device

Another solution might be to see if change requests could be put to the FREENAS team to develop power-management solutions at software level.

Just thoughts. I will admit to not being as knowledgeable as many of you on this forum.

By: drevil

drevil — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 18:07:36 +0000

I use freenas all the time. I put all my music and non-personal files on it. that way I don’t have to hook up a external harddrive or usb drive to other computers. It is very useful.

By: Core

Core — Wed, 29 Jul 2009 03:10:00 +0000

Its actually kinda odd that people are talking about power here… considering just about all of you are being cooled off or warmed up by a air condition that takes monstrous amounts of power compared to any computer that sombody has that wants to set up for this use >.<

By: Dispelled.ca » links for 2009-03-08

Dispelled.ca » links for 2009-03-08 — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 21:02:10 +0000

[...] Convert Old PC To Network Attached Storage with FreeNas | MakeUseOf.com [...]

By: VD

VD — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 05:42:24 +0000

I need old PC for tweaking I would love to go for the old PCs which you have.

By: Nathan Fiedler

Nathan Fiedler — Sun, 08 Mar 2009 03:44:06 +0000

With FreeNAS 0.7 you get ZFS support, which provides a lot of advantages over standard RAID implementations. If you have two or more disks, you can set up a redundant pool of disks so the loss of one does not mean you lose any data. I’ve got four disks set up in a RAID-Z pool myself.

By: Latest Important Articles On The Web Feb. 2nd, 2009 | 4 Free On Internet

Latest Important Articles On The Web Feb. 2nd, 2009 | 4 Free On Internet — Sat, 28 Feb 2009 22:43:24 +0000

[...] popping up . # ZDnet.com – Google blames ‘human error’ for search ‘malware’ hiccup . # MakeUseOf.com – Convert Your Old PC To Network Attached Storage With FreeNas . # MakeUseOf.com – A Review Of The Internet Explorer 8 RC1 Browser . # MakeUseOf.com – Extend [...]

By: T.J. Mininday

T.J. Mininday — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:47:59 +0000

Exactly, as long as you have some type of connection between locations, it’s very possible. Let me know if you need specific instructions. Great question!

By: skydvr

skydvr — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 21:10:47 +0000

Alberta Hall – I’m not TJ, but…

If the “process monitors” can access your “central office”’s network, then there’s no reason why not. A NAS box is just storage that hangs off the network. When you mount it (IE: as a drive letter in Windows), the “process monitors” won’t know that it’s not a local drive.

You use the term “web accessible”, which is different than being able to be mounted as storage, which a NAS is – a NAS doesn’t necessarily run a web server. The “process monitors” can write a log file as they normally do, but the drive will be located in your central office. You’d still have individual log files for each, as they’re still each writing their own log file.

The main thing is that if the machines running the “process monitors” can’t access the “central office”’s network, then a NAS won’t help – it’s just a device on the network – no more or less acessible than any other device on that network.

HTH.

By: Alberta Hall

Alberta Hall — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 18:19:04 +0000

TJ, let me ask this: Can two process monitors that are in differnt parts of the city write to my central office where I put one of these FreeNAS devices? Seems to me that, since this NAS device appears to be a web accessible device, I should be able to redirect the log files that now get written on the local hard drives at these two sites and have them show up on my office computer that has the NAS device on it? Comments anyone? Can this NAS be used to automatically receive data redirected from remote sites?
Alberta

By: Jay Ray

Jay Ray — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 11:49:37 +0000

The real question is how much extra energy an old pc based NAS uses compared to a standard NAS device. I’d like to see some kill-a-watt data of a DIY PC based nas with only essential devices turned on compared with a market NAS. I bet they are not much different and the wake on lan feature would even make the energy consumption even less of an issue. Anyone care to test and post your results?

By: Richard

Richard — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 14:03:25 +0000

I think Earl's comment was associated with the fact that some hardware must be active ("on") to receive the signal. Even if you aren't using it, a plugged in transformer consumes some power. Termed "Vampire" electronics, this wastes 5% of US power annually according to the article at http://www.switched.com/2007/10/31/five-percent-of-u-s-electricity-wasted-by-vampire-electronics/

By: halo

halo — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 16:38:51 +0000

Every hibernation takes some energy. There must be a process listening to a wake-up-call. Perhaps this small process takes a very little bit of energy, but how could it be living on ‘no power’?
Little drops fill a bathtub, given enough time (and when dripping 24×7, that could much faster than you think)

By: Jed

Jed — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 02:06:48 +0000

Nikon, Take a look at the previous comments. There is a lot of discussion on the power use already.

By: Nikon

Nikon — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 13:49:31 +0000

If you care about environment, did u think about the energy consumption of all this devices? Is that not a waist?

By: skydvr

skydvr — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:16:00 +0000

There are plenty of good reasons to use NAT in a home network, but more on point, there are also good reasons to use NAS. I set up a NAS box for digital photo/music storage so that a) it’s RAIDed and I won’t lose it all if 1 drive dies b) my wife and I can both view the pictures from our laptops without me having to worry about whether the desktop is powered on and the “share” is active c) access music from any PC.

I set it up as an Ubuntu box with samba and RAID though – I don’t recall why I decided against FreeNAS – I just did. I think because it allowed me to use the box for other purposes as well – I was originally planning to set up a MythTV server, and that box was going to serve double duty. I haven’t done that yet, though.

Anyway, my point being, NAS in the home can be useful, for more than “geek cred”.

By: DS

DS — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:31:49 +0000

I need a PC for a project at home, do you have one of those ‘obsolete’ pcs that is still pretty reasonable hardware that you would sell?

By: Larry

Larry — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:28:34 +0000

I haven’t used this particular software (yet) but I do have a home server. Recycling old hardware is awesome but I don’t like running a PC all the time especially an old one.
I have several laptops though that are ancient and will not be useful for anything any more, some won’t even boot from or use an internal HDD anymore. These are the types of devices that can boot from USB and be used for very little cost per day as great servers for the home user.

By: Tanner

Tanner — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:19:19 +0000

There are many unix scripts which can watch the NAS server for activity breaks, at which time it can halt the OS to save power usage. I’m willing to bet many others have wanted the same solution so there is probably scripts available on the freeNAS forums for this.

To Earl:
Ricardo is correct in his statement. If your computer is wake on lan compatible then your router can send special packets with instructions to come back from hibernation. Since your computer goes in and out of hibernation it does not use power during it’s downtime

By: T.J. Mininday

T.J. Mininday — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:11:54 +0000

Nice call. I’ve been hearing rave reviews about Orb lately. Here’s a great set of instructions on how to set it up:

http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/total-media-domination-your-tv-video-and-audio-on-any-device/

By: Perry

Perry — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:55:33 +0000

The idea of FreeNAS is especially helpful to those of us who don’t live in or near a large municipality that offers a recycling program for old pc’s. Additionally, since it is for my personal use, I can determine when the NAS needs to be online and when the pc can be powered off. Great product.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:47:17 +0000

Oops sorry. Guess I should have refreshed the page before posting my comment.

Thanks for the suggestion Ricardo and Phil.

By: Steve

Steve — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:26:36 +0000

I’m wondering if this would work with a ‘Wake-On-LAN’ capable NIC, so that the old PC running FreeNAS would only wake-up when needed and not burn energy 7×24? Has anyone tried this?

I agree with not liking the idea of the PC sitting there using energy 7×24 when it is only needed for brief periods. I do like the idea, though, of having the network storage that would be accessible from any machine on the network.

By: Phil

Phil — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 14:17:03 +0000

Earl, it’s called Wake-on-lan. Read up about it here. Just as your PC can respond and turn on by you hitting the power button, it can do so by receiving a signal via ethernet.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wake-on-LAN

By: Thrawn

Thrawn — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:52:06 +0000

FreeNAS allows you to get rid of M$oft OS which reduces the attack surface of your file resources. No Outlook viruses here…
Primary Use? Check out http://orb.com/. This allows you to stream all of your home content (videos, music, pictures) to any location you are at… even your iPhone, or Windows mobile device.

By: Earl

Earl — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:33:45 +0000

Ricardo: That makes no sense. If the computer is “off” how it is supposed to respond to an “on” message? If it is not “off” it’s wasting energy. I don’t believe in leaving a computer that is not doing anything “on” in any way.

By: Womble

Womble — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:25:52 +0000

Maybe your interpretation is wrong? people are simply relaying their own opinion nothing wrong with that at as long as the conversation remains civil which it has.

By: Ricardo

Ricardo — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 13:04:24 +0000

You know, almost every computer can be waked using a magik packet sent over the network. This way you can turn it on and off, even if you are not in site. This allows you to save energy just using it on demand.

By: david

david — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 07:41:44 +0000

Holy Jebus! What’s wrong with everyone? Relax.

The author of this post was simply recommending a great piece of software in case you needed it. If you don’t, calm down, and click on a different link. Please.