First post, by Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman
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- l33t
Even when using only one physical hard drive, I have a strict habit of separating system files and data files into separate partitions (and not storing my data in \My Documents). As such, if the operating system got damaged, let say, the boot sector is corrupted, or the O/S won't boot because of virus, all I need to do is unplugging the hard drive from the PC, and then plug it into another PC as slave drive. That way, I could easily access my data by working on that other PC. And since all my home office computers are either Windows XP or Windows 7, such data recovery method is easy to implement.
Same goes with external hard drives. Usually, when a hard drive enclosure got damaged, the hard drive itself is usually intact. Then its trivial to recover the data, since all I need to do is open the enclosure, take out the hard drive, and put it in a new enclosure (or plug it into a PC).
In any case, I've been very interested to build my own NAS using FreeNAS. Also, many FreeNAS users seem to prefer putting their FreeNAS O/S in USB thumb drive. Nonetheless, I'm still concerned about recoverability.
(1) Let say I'm using RAID 5. What if the FreeNAS O/S went FUBAR, the thumb drive went bad, etcetera, etcetera, that I need to reinstall the whole damn thing? Will the newly installed FreeNAS O/S be able to read the existing RAID 5? Or will I end up with a set of Redundant Array of Unreadable Disks? 😵
(2) It seems the safest option --albeit the most expensive-- is to use multiple RAID 1 volumes (instead of RAID 10). That way, if the O/S went FUBAR, all I need to do is unplugging the hard drive, then plug it into another PC to recover the data. Problem is, FreeNAS uses ZFS instead of NTFS. So are there utilities to read ZFS files on Windows 7 and/or Windows XP?
(3) Or perhaps I should use FreeNAS with NTFS volumes in RAID 1. That way, if the NAS went FUBAR, I could easily unplug the hard drive and plug it into a PC to read and recover the data. But does FreeNAS even support NTFS?
(4) Or perhaps I should look for other Linux-based fileserver that can easily use NTFS for their shared volumes. But how difficult it is to use NTFS on Linux, let alone using NTFS for Samba share.
(5) As last resort, I still have a surplus license of Windows 2003 Server. Perhaps I should build Windows 2003-based NAS instead? But I wonder if I can do better.
What would you suggest? Thanks in advance.
Never thought this thread would be that long, but now, for something different.....
Kreshna Aryaguna Nurzaman.