Thread: Installing Freenas

What I do is mark the disks, used to with texta, but it can fade(maybe the heat), then got a labeller which allowed more detail.

I think what you may want to know is which one is HDD0, HDD1 and so forth.
If they're all the same brand/type/size then it'd be handy to know serial number too, otherwise just the model number is handy enough(eg. WD40 03FZEX 00Z4SA0
Windows seems to call hard drive slots HDD and then proceeded by a number(0-whatever), so it makes sense to number HDD0 on a Windows machine HDD0, HDD1, etc.
FreeNAS labels SATA drives ada(number) .. so it makes sense to label your drives ada0-ada7 if they're basically all the same, then followed by either model number and or serial number.

Your USB stick will be labelled da(whatever number) .. as opposed to the ada of the SATA drives.
What happens once you've booted into FreeNAS proper, I have no idea as I couldn't access the web interface(had no device at hand to do so).
But having just quickly looked at some of the features and management systems on their site:
I'd say that the most important marking would be the ada(number) marking.
While they also use serial numbers, it could be easy to confuse serial numbers that are closely related.
if a drive drops out, you're trying to read 7 (other)serial numbers to work out the which one is the dead one.(remember a dead drive won't be listed on the list on the machine).
So you'll see a list of drives from ada0 - ada7 .. one will be missing if it died(eg. ada5) and you know to pull out ada5.


On my QNAP NAS, I don't really have to worry about this as they're installed into removable cradles which sit in specific slots. I've marked the cradles 1-4 .. easy.

One last tip(but of course not knowing what your usage is going to be) .. I'd recommend against using raid if you can avoid it.
Been bitten by it previously.
The only real advantage for using a raid(minimum of 5) is that you want the safety of redundancy but ALSO want speed, so this would assume a fast direct connection like USB3 or faster). Any connection using Gb Cat or less is just not worth the drama of using raid.
I have 4 drives in my NAS, and if I were to use raid 5, that would take out 3 drives for the purpose of safeguarding 2 of them! .. to me makes no sense.
So I prefer single drives(not jbod/pooling) and just mirror the contents of each drive that stores data that is vital.
For me I have terabytes of photos I want to protect, so I have two drives dedicated for that. I sync them only when I know it's time too .. etc, etc.
Then in Windows, I just map the drives I want/need access too.
Even then, you don't even need to map them as network drives, you can still access them under the network tabs. Mapping them is just another lazy bones way to do some things .. such as access to the Send To command for those drives .. and so forth.

Booting from a hdd?
and lose an entire drive?
the blurb says freenas will fill whatever size drive you use to hold it-- at the expense of everything else previously on it!

maybe I should go back to the last .img version and upgrade,,,
I'm not sure you can upgrade from a stable to a nightly,,
and Ten looks the goods,,,