Do the ZIL and L2ARC upgrades take up a hard drive bay, or do they have their own dedicated spots inside the FreeNAs Mini?
1461892
Ok I had one of these units the operating system on this runs off of a DOM (Disk On Module) that plugs into a sata port on the motherboard. There are 4 hard drive openings for 2.5 or 3.5 sata hard drives. There is also one internal mounting point for a 2.5" ssd (for the ZIL upgrade). So to answer your question NO it does not have to use up any of the four main hard drive slots. The motherboard they use on this is ASRock C2550D4I that is unless they changed the spec. I hope these answers are useful. Also check out nas4free it's the original project that freenas is based off of.
1461893
There are 4 main drive bays and 2 internal bays for ZIL and L2ARC upgrades. You need your own power and Sata cables. The routing of the cables is Very Tight!!! I put 2 Solid state drives there and it worked great.Hope this helps
1461894
The hard drives are only used for storage. The OS and any plugins are stored I believe on an SSD inside the system.
100784
I am using 2.5" WD Blue's. Seem to be working fine. My issue with the Drobo Mini is I use it with a Mac Mini and the drives won't hibernate. I have the setting in the Drobo dashboard checked. I have seen comments in the Apple forums that this is an issue with Mavericks and Firewire but nothing about Lightning connections. This may be a deal breaker for me.
402311
You would have to replace the two hard drives in the LinkStation with drives that have a larger capacity. Supported drives can be found here:http://www.buffalotech.com/content/files/products/Supported_HDD_List_LS-WXL.pdfYou will still need to transfer your old data to the NAS after installing the new drives.
1434354
Not sure which unit you are referring to, but for my Synology NAS, which was a 1812, I was able to install additional RAM to bring it up to 3GB. So in general yes, if they come with X amount of RAM installed and note that they are expandable beyond that, then it is a user installable option to add more RAM to the Synology NAS. It was pretty simple in mine, had to remove the over and locate the position of the RAM modules.
1300888
Yes. I did exactly that when I purchased my Synology NAS. The BlackArmor NAS was a piece of crap, but the drives are fine and the Syno. NAS will play well with them.
1005257
Hi, This unit only have 1 3.5" HDD bay and it is already used. No more extra bay for expansion. Thanks, PCrush
212325
why not upgrade the internal drive to a larger size - the unit is basically a box that contains a hard drive
327896
Nope, add what you want. Don't know about inserting already used (data on board) drives. I've always placed 'new' / clean drives in. There isn't a requirement to fill all slots. I have (3) 1TB drives in my 5N.
1560556
I am running 4 X 2tb hard drives in a "mirror" config. That only gives me 4tb of actual storage space but the hot swap feature was what I wanted.
1905074
No it doesn't need it. So I just started with 2 old 1TB HDDs than after 1.5 week I added 3 4TB new HDDs. Later I expended 3 4TB HDD with 1 more of the same type. Finally I have 2 disk groups. Configuration of NAS is very flexible and it is really fully up to you.
1687484
Ronald, I have done both copied smaller drives to bigger 1GB to 3GB I have 2 of these enclosures and love them
2233171
Kinda prefer hard drive docking stations actually. Especially ones straight up and down. Easier on the motor. One I'm using is Vantec e-sata in white. Think it only goes to 3TB so when I go to 4 TB I gotta look for a new one. I mostly prefer it because I can stick a 3-4 inch mini fan behind it if it gets too warm. And cases don't do much for heat dissipation even the ones that are supposed to. Only one that did they don't make anymore :(
461501
You don't "get the fact that its diskless". This simply means that the NAS is not shipped with hard disks. They must be purchased separately. I would suggest the WD NAS rated drives. Make sure to get 2 of them. Same size.
1536738
Nope. Well, it didn't work for me and unfortunately I threw away the box and was unable to return it. I had to buy an alternate card which worked fine with FreeNas. Have a look on their site for compatible cards.
559697
None...you install the hard drives you want, If you go to their website you can find out a lot of answers. www.bufflaotech.com
606996
Yes, this can be done with Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR). And yes, the process is not difficult, i.e. it is "smooth" (if you meant something else by smooth, please let me know). But upgrading the drives on this unit is one of the benefits of it. If you use traditional RAID options, then no you will not be able to upgrade one drive at a time to increase capacity. From my discussions with Synology, 12 bay units are generally recommended with traditional RAID, but they did indicate that many people use SHR with no problems. Personally, I would try to minimize use of the unit during the upgrade since it may help speed up the expansion.
987591
Nope. The new mac mini uses flash memory that is soldiered on to the logic board. There is no connection point for an HDD at all. What you get when you buy it from Apple what you will ever have. You can use a USB 3 enclosure to add more HDDs though. With USB 3 its about as fast as an internal drive. Same goes for the ram, soldiered on, so max it out as much as you can before purchase.