Terrified linux newbie needs help

faubo · 18. September 2012

Hi there,

I'm not a linux guy, and after reading some sites I think OMV is the system I need in my home NAS.

I never installed anything from an USB stick but I think I can handle that, it seems easy enough.

My problems are... I have 6 HDs formated in NTFS with data on it, and two other 2TB green WD without any data.

1- I dont want to loose any data on my 6 HDs, I will have to format them to other filesystem? Should I install only the 2 TB green WD (only one actually, those will be in RAID, have to read about that first to find out what I need/want), transfer all files to it and then add the other HDs, ready to wipe them out and format in some filesystem adequate to OMV? (I can use them in my windows desktop to transfer for the HDs in the NAS)

2- This seems like a stupid question but... I will be able to access the files from my windows PCs using other filesystems?

3- What filesystem should I use???? Is there any good site to read about then?

4- Will I be able to instal XBMC and run the NAS as a media player (it's not really needed right now but it may be very useful in the near future), since XBMC can be installed in linux?

I'm eager to install this system, even without much free time (work, wife and 2 small children)

Thanks for any help!

openletter · 18. September 2012

Zitat von "faubo"

Hi there,

I'm not a linux guy, and after reading some sites I think OMV is the system I need in my home NAS.

I never installed anything from an USB stick but I think I can handle that, it seems easy enough.

My problems are... I have 6 HDs formated in NTFS with data on it, and two other 2TB green WD without any data.

1- I dont want to loose any data on my 6 HDs, I will have to format them to other filesystem? Should I install only the 2 TB green WD (only one actually, those will be in RAID, have to read about that first to find out what I need/want), transfer all files to it and then add the other HDs, ready to wipe them out and format in some filesystem adequate to OMV? (I can use them in my windows desktop to transfer for the HDs in the NAS)

2- This seems like a stupid question but... I will be able to access the files from my windows PCs using other filesystems?

3- What filesystem should I use???? Is there any good site to read about then?

4- Will I be able to instal XBMC and run the NAS as a media player (it's not really needed right now but it may be very useful in the near future), since XBMC can be installed in linux?

I'm eager to install this system, even without much free time (work, wife and 2 small children)

Thanks for any help!

Alles anzeigen

OMV has limited support for NTFS. Perhaps others install OMV to a USB, but I just use an old laptop HDD. If I were you, I would install OMV (on it's own drive) and then install the 2 TB RAID (1?). It will take you some time to understand mounting, creating filesystems, shares, etc. Then I would transfer the data from the other drives once everything is working and you have some basic understanding of how to use it. If you plan on using the drives as part of the NAS, then it's probably easier to install them and, if you're seeking redundancy, transfer the data to the RAID.

If you setup SMB/CIFS, then your Windows machines will see the shared folders just as they do shared folders on other Windows machines.

XFS or ext4 is just fine.

As far as media player - you're going to use this to watch movies or play music with? Usually a NAS is an appliance that just serves files and does a few other things, so I'm not sure if this is supported with this build or perhaps a plugin. If you have plans for such uses, you may be better off installing Ubuntu and setting up your shares through that. However, if you're just wanting a device to serve the media files to other devices, then OMV should work well.

faubo · 19. September 2012

Thanks Openletter,

I think I will do just that, install in a single empty HDD and mess around with mouting, filesystems etc... then I install my 2 x2TB in raid for redundancy. After that and some testing I will start to transfer data over the other 6 Hdds and as they got "empty" I will just format to XFS or EXT4.

About the media server... since this is a linux build, it's not just to install the media server packages and I would be good to go?

openletter · 19. September 2012

Someone else will have to answer that, but this isn't a full Linux, I believe it's scaled down and missing a lot of things. Now it could be a media server, but I wouldn't choose to use this to play media with, I would install Ubuntu, XBMC, and set it up to share files.

sbocquet · 20. September 2012

For the media server, if you go through DLNA, than you can use the minidlna plugin for OMV.

Else, if you use XBMC for media rendering, then you can connect to your server via FTP/SMB/CIFS directly...

KM0201 · 1. Oktober 2012

I would definitely pull the NTFS drives so you don't risk bricking them. "Play" with the blank drives until you have an
understanding of what you are doing.

As mentioned, installing "TO" a USB drive, is probably not the way to go.... There's to much disk writing done by OMV, and you'll nuke it pretty quickly. Take the smallest hard drive you have, and use it to host the OS (keep in mind, this drive will just be for the OS, not to use for services, etc..). If all your drives are humongous (500gigs +) get on ebay or newegg, etc.. and buy a cheap laptop hard drive. I've got an 80gig laptop drive that I use for the "OS" drive. When you've got 6tb of storage, 80gigs is nothing. When this 80gig drive dies, I have another one, when that one dies, I have a 40gig waiting.

There's really no point in using a huge drive to host the OS.

openletter · 1. Oktober 2012

I'm in total agreement. I have a 20GB 4200 RPM 2.5" EIDI laptop HDD. It consumes .5 w and is dead silent in a case. This great because it doesn't tie up and SATA ports. I am only just learning about backing things up, but I intend to keep an image backup so if it does fail I can quickly replace it.

Jetzt mitmachen!