Which file system

badboyz84 · 22. November 2012

I'm planning on building a NAS server to store my media files and stream them with xmbc.

I have been doing a lot of reading but just getting overwhelmed...

Trying to decide on FreeNas or OpenMediaVault and then what file system should I use?

My main issue is I currently have drives at different sizes and want to be able to grow the nas in the future but with 1 disk at a time. I have read that for zfs you must grow with 2 disks at a time so I guess that options out.

Currently I have a 1tb disk and a 2tb disk, I plan on buying another 2 or 3tb disk during the sales this weekend.

So I guess my main issue is what filesystem would allow me to stream 1080p movies over the network and allow me to mix disk sizes and grow the pool at 1 disk at a time?

Also any major differences between freenas and omv when used as a media server? I have seen there are guides for setting up sabnzb on both platforms.

Thanks!

tekkb · 22. November 2012

Use Omv because it's way faster and based on Debian. Others will probably chime in with more reasons. Best for what you're doing to just use ext4. I've tried Freenas, like 3 yrs ago, and thought it was a joke when I saw transfer rates. If you plan on using DLNA with movies, or any plus 500mb file for that matter, omv is for you.

badboyz84 · 23. November 2012

thanks, tv shows are around 400-600mb each and movies are 1-3gb.

fpabernard · 13. Dezember 2012

You should consider also XFS file system if you use large files, as it is faster for large file and it is more resistant to fragmentation (and it has a defrag tool).

SerErris · 18. Dezember 2012

And of cause the latter is not true anymore if you compare XFS vs. ext4.

I would suggest using OMV as Freenas disapointet me alot with speed, even with ZFS.

You also should ask yourselve about protection of the storage layer. If you want anything raid-like protection of disk failures, you need to plan disks in the same size.

If you do not want to put a raid level below, then just setup LVM on the physical disks by creating a PV out of each disk and create a logical volume on top of it. You can put as much disks in it as you like (okay there are some limits, but they are to high to be of any concern here), and you can then increase (online !) the ext4 filesystem to your needs.

Again, the second method does not offer any protection against hard disk failures.

I would recommend to use 3 disks as a start with raid5 all the same size (e.g. 2TB) and then you can add additional disks to it. On top of it for ease of handling put LVM and ext4.

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