
Installing FreeNAS on my QNAP TS-459 - humaid
https://humaidq.ae/blog/qnap/
======
linsomniac
RAID drive fails, "I regretted installing ClamAV".

Don't regret it! It allowed you to find a drive failure before a second drive
failed, and allowed you to recover your data while it was still recoverable!
This is a good thing!

Archival data is a tricky problem. If you don't regularly read it, you may
find that when you do need to read it, that the sector has suffered some bit
rot. What's one of the most likely cases where you have to read archived data?
When a hard drive fails and RAID is doing a rebuild...

So, by all means, run a ClamAV scan! Or better yet, run a ZFS scrub monthly or
so. I've been a huge fan of ZFS for my archive data, mostly historic photos
and Google takeout data now, because it can detect silent corruption and can
do scrubs to verify and repair any hard drives sectors that have problems.

~~~
humaid
Thank you for the advice. Will keep it mind when setting it up with the new
drives!

~~~
linsomniac
Oh, my other advice is: Avoid Seagate drives. Historically, I've found Hitachi
to be the most reliable, and the BackBlaze hard drive stats seem to confirm
that, though they tend to have small numbers of Hitachi drives. This is
because they optimize for price not reliability. I've had good luck with other
brands, but I've pretty much had universally bad luck with Seagate. Last year
I replaced the last of our Stagate 15K drives with SSDs because, largely, I
was tired of doing warranty returns every month or two.

~~~
jlgaddis
> _Oh, my other advice is: Avoid Seagate drives ... I 've found Hitachi to be
> the most reliable ... but I've pretty much had universally bad luck with
> Seagate._

Don't take this personally but this advice is fairly useless.

For every person like you, who has "found Hitachi to be the most reliable" and
"had universally bad luck with Seagate", there's someone else who has the
exact opposite advice.

Our opinions are shaped by our own experiences, of course, and (most of the
tine) it's hard to change our minds or convince us otherwise.

The (unfortunate) truth is that there's no one brand of HDDs that really is
"the best" \-- especially for all use cases! If there were, well, we'd all be
using them by now and all of the other manufacturers would have already went
out of business.

~~~
linsomniac
I would generally agree with you, but it comes from a decently sized sample
set (not huge, a few thousand), but also because it seems to be backed up
consistently by Backblaze's stats. :-)

------
nicolaslem
I was surprised that there are very few PC cases made for small NAS. So this
solution of buying a consumer product and installing FreeNAS on it makes
sense.

~~~
moreorless
These things are great for small NAS.

[https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/servers/proliant-
microserver/proli...](https://buy.hpe.com/us/en/servers/proliant-
microserver/proliant-microserver/proliant-microserver/hpe-proliant-
microserver-gen10/p/1009955118)

~~~
hnick
My FreeNAS has been running for years on an older ProLiant, off a USB stick,
in an Ikea desk cupboard with poor ventilation (some gaps around the front
door, and a 4 inch circle drilled in the back). The only failure so far was
the old USB stick, once I reinstalled and put a new stick on I could see my
ZFS data again.

I should probably update the software, but I already broke it once trying
that, so for now it's sitting happy as a dumping ground for files.

------
ksec
Qnap actually has a new OS called Hero Edition that uses ZFS by default,
coming in Q3.

[https://www.qnap.com/quts-hero/en/](https://www.qnap.com/quts-hero/en/)

~~~
FullyFunctional
Why not support the company that actually supports the development of ZFS
instead? I don't know anything about Qnap but FreeNAS has a wealth of robust
functionality. I'd be curious as to why people would prefer Qnap?

~~~
zenonu
Looking at FreeNAS's page, it's all "Get Quote" nonsense for anything rack
mounted. Needs a system configuration page with prices to play around with.

------
dghughes
At college I built a Linux cluster for a project and for the SAN/NAS I used
XigmasNAS. It's so much smaller and less bloated than FreeNAS has become.

I had trouble configuring parts of the cluster but overall XigmaNAS worked
well.

------
aquaticsunset
This is timely!

I have a QNAP TS-251 (two drive bay model) that has been collecting dust for
roughly two and a half years. Somebody was able to install a ransomware
program on it, I suspect using the QSnatch[1] vulnerability. I triple pass
zeroed the system storage and mothballed it.

Two months ago decided I wanted to do something with this machine again, so I
bought two new Seagate IronWolf drives and installed FreeNAS (it can boot to
and run from the USB 3.0 port on the back).

Is it the perfect hardware for FreeNAS? Nope - barely meets the minimum 8GB
RAM requirements. But it's running as a media backup and Plex server, and
doing a fantastic job at it. When I outgrow this hardware I'll certainly
replace it with something I can also install FreeNAS on - consider me a happy
convert.

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/dvh7n2/qsnatch_malwar...](https://www.reddit.com/r/qnap/comments/dvh7n2/qsnatch_malware_general_post_information_and/)

------
rufius
Interesting.

I have a TVS-471 that I run the default QNAP OS on. That said, I only use it
for typical NAS workloads like:

\- serving media \- file storage \- device backup \- off-site backup

I recently started using the Hybrid Backup Station app and have been pretty
impressed. I’ve got three jobs - Multimedia, Photos, and Archive backup. They
all go to BackBlaze B2 on slightly different schedules.

Been really pleased with it. That said, I do find the UI a little clunky so I
can see why the author chose an alternative for their use case.

I’ve got a cheap $150 NUC I use for more typical *nix server stuff that sits
next to the NAS. It mostly runs an unbound DNS Forwarder for now but I plan to
expand its usage further.

------
trengrj
Rather than waste time using one of the proprietary NAS systems like QNAP and
Synology, why not support a system that runs and supports unmodified Linux and
publishes full schematics like the upcoming Kobol64
[https://kobol.io/](https://kobol.io/)?

------
ianlevesque
Is that typical for QNAP to allow alternative OS installs? I know with
Synology you cannot.

~~~
Wubdidu
I have Debian running on my TS-451A for quite a while now. Except the front
LEDs, everything is working completely fine. It is pretty much just a plain
x86_64 PC with an UEFI firmware. The TS-251A is exactly the same but with 2
instead of 4 drive bays, as far as I know.

It's very neat for its low power usage and small form factor.

~~~
WhatIsDukkha
Raw debian right and not the qnap vm?

How did you layout the partitions?

What's on the 512m internal?

I have one in the basement I've tried to install one too many times and I need
to remotivate.

