If you’ve been following along with the other FreeNAS articles, we have installed and performed basic system configuration for the FreeNAS server. Now we are ready to configure the disks in the system.
Add Hard Drives to FreeNAS
The first action that we need to perform is adding the hard drives on the system to FreeNAS. By default, FreeNAS is unaware of the hard drives in the system.
Start by clicking on the Management item under the Disks menu to bring up the disk management interface.
Click on the 
icon to start the hard disk addition process.
You will now be presented with a screen containing a number of drop down options.
In general, most of the options can be left to their defaults. The only drop down that you will probably need to use is the Disk drop down. This lists all of the hard drives on your system. Simply select the hard drive that you would like to add to FreeNAS and click the 
button.
Repeat this process for each hard drive in the system.
The only exception to this rule is the drive that contains the FreeNAS operating system. You will have to set the Preformated FS option to UFS.
When you have completed adding all of the disks, click on the 
button to activate the changes made.
If you have done everything correctly, you should now have completed the hard drive additions.
Format the Disks
Now that we have all of the drives in FreeNAS, you will now format the disks.
Note: Do NOT format the disk that contains the FreeNAS operating system.
Click on the Format tab on the disk configuration page. The two drop downs that we are concerned with are the Disk and File System drop downs.
The Disk drop down lists all of the disks that you added to the FreeNAS system in the previous step. You only need to format the disks the do not contain the FreeNAS operating system. The disk containing the FreeNAS OS was formatted as part of the installation process.
Select the first non-FreeNAS disk. Next, in the File System drop down, select a file system. Your file system options are:
- UFS with Soft Updates (use 8% space disk)
- UFS
- UFS (EFI/GPT) with Soft Updates (use 8% space disk)
- UFS (EFI/GPT)
- FAT32
- NTFS
- Software RAID: gmirror
- Software RAID: graid5
- Software RAID: gvinum
There could be a long discussion behind which file system to use. I will be using UFS. Why? Because this is the file system that FreeNAS uses. (Sometimes decisions need not be complicated.)
Once you have selected your file system, click on 
.
Warning! Formatting the disk will erase the entire contents of the disk and you will not be able to get any data stored on that disk back. Make sure that any data that you still want to keep has been copied off these disks!
Click OK on the format confirmation to dialog and the formatting will begin.
The actual disk formatting may take some time, depending on the size of the disk. When it is complete, you will receive a message something like this:
Disk initialization details:
Erasing MBR
******* Working on device /dev/ad1 *******
/dev/ad1s1: 1023.7MB (2096576 sectors) block size 16384, fragment size 2048
using 6 cylinder groups of 183.77MB, 11761 blks, 23552 inodes.
super-block backups (for fsck -b #) at:
160, 376512, 752864, 1129216, 1505568, 1881920
Repeat this process for all non-FreeNAS disks.
Once you have formatted all of your non-FreeNAS disks, go back to the Manage tab.
All of your disks should now show a file system.
Mounting Disks
Once the formatting process is complete, you now need to mount the disks in the FreeNAS system. By mounting the disks, this gives FreeNAS access to the file system that you just put on the disks and FreeNAS can start doing things (such as saving and sharing) with actual files.
To begin, click on Mount Point under the Disks menu to see your mount point settings.
To add a mount point, click on the button.
You are now presented with the add mount point window. There are five field to fill out:
- Disk - The disk that contains the partition you wish to mount. The disks listed here will be the same as the disks added earlier.
- Partition - Generally, this will be partition 1. The main exception to this rule is if you are mounting the DATA partition on the disk containing the FreeNAS operating system. Then this will be partition 2.
- File system - This is the same as file system you formatted the disk to be.
- Share Name - This is what the people on the network will see. Make it short and sweet, yet logical. E.g. data, documents, music, etc.
- Description - Make this a good descriptive phrase that will help you out in case the share name leaves something to be desired.
The last two entries, share name and description are not required but I suggest that you take ten seconds to fill them out as it will make your life a whole lot easier 2 years from now when you haven’t got a hot clue as to what disk_ad0_part_s2 means!
Repeat this process for all of your disks.
Once you have created mount points for all of your disk partitions, click on to write the mount point information to disk and make it permanent. You should end up with something like this:
Conclusion
You have now successfully configured your disks to work with FreeNAS. Your system is now ready to be put to work for whatever you see fit.
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November 27th, 2006 at 7:45 am
I noticed you’re setting up your NAS on a VM. I too have setup a NAS VM. Is this your long term solution or are you just setting up this machine for teaching perposes? Also I only have one extra machine at home therefore I like to make that machine server multiple roles (i.e. web server, file share, etc..) Would you recommend setting up a FreeNAS on this machine? I know that if the hardware does fail on the physical machine I’m out of luck. But other than that, do you think this is a good practice?
Side note: How many machines do you have running at home?
November 27th, 2006 at 9:28 am
Scott,
The virtual machine (VM) that I am showing in the screen shots is for teaching purposes only. It is a lot easier to
get screen shots. With the cost of hardware being so low and the hardware requirements for FreeNAS being next to
nothing, I would definitely go to dedicated hardware.
In general, I use VM for two purposes:
Now, with that being said, I am starting to consider using VW in a production environment because it will let you
deploy some solutions which require very little in the way of system resources without having to purchase hardware,
configure it, etc. There are also some benefits to being able to “lock” the disks so that if it were to come under
an attack and it was modified, all you would need to do is reboot the VM system and you are back to normal.
As for the systems that I have at home, here is the breakdown:
Hmmm…That sure looks like a lot when you list it all out like that!
Tim
November 27th, 2006 at 9:59 am
Thanks for the quick response Tim. The reason I ask about hosting VM’s is because I have seen their success/reliability/cost-savings at my work. We probably have around 12 VM’s hosted on VMWare’s ESX server. They’re serving some pretty dominate roles too, like the DC , Exchange, and Main File server. Now with VMWare’s GSX server just released for free. I’m thinking of trying to save on cost too, and host from my WinXP machine. Maybe only 2-3 servers, but still.
Man, you do have a lot of servers/computers at home! I’m jealous. How does your wife feel about all the computers? Are you ever concerned about your power bill? Do you use those computers for business or is it just for fun/personal use?
Thanks again, for the great site. If your blog really starts taking off and you find yourself needing some extra staff, sign me up! Your blog has inspired me to start up my own “tech” blog to reflect what my wife calls “nerdness”. Though it’s not up yet. Until later..
Scott
November 27th, 2006 at 11:17 am
Scott,
My wife is OK with it. I have my own separate computer lab and storage area. She knows that this is how I support the family and if I want to be a leader in my field, there are certain things that you do.
As for the power bill, I’m not really concerned. There are certain things that I just pay for and the power to run my systems is one of them.
But, I am working on a project to generate free power and convert some systems over in my house so that I can run my entire lab without the need of external power sources. I am looking at a combination of gas generators, wind turbines, and solar power. I’m documenting everything and I think it will make a great post series sometime in the future.
The computers are a combination personal and business systems.
Tim
November 28th, 2006 at 5:36 pm
This site rocks my socks off! Keep up the good work while I go install my Filesever! XD
February 15th, 2007 at 11:11 am
I’d just like to echo the other praise about your site It’s top notch) - Now I’m not sure if you can help and I hope you don’t mind me asking, but I have a Drive issue with FreeNas.
I’ve just bought and installed a new 300GB Seagate drive and for some reason it appears named as DMA in FreeNas, where as the other 2 drives show their MB or GB size. Why DMA?
Now I checked the BIOS and the new drive is the sec Master and it’s set to AUTO with 300.1GB next to it, but unlike the others it’s not se to USER and then their heads/cylinders etc..
Back in FreeNas, reading the boot up Freenas posts a message that says “ad2: DMA limited to UDMA33, controller found non-ATA66 cable”?
And another strange thing is that the BIOS says 300.1GB, but FreeNas on boot posts “ad2: 286168MB at ata1-master UDMA33″ Yet at the same time if I go under Diagnostic and Information/ATAidle the drives shows..
Results for ad2:Device Info:Model: ST3300831ASerial: 4NF0M3FVFirmware Rev: 3.06ATA revision: ATA-7Geometry: 16383 cyls, 16 heads, 63 sptCapacity: 127GB
A 300GB drive, reporting 286168MB on boot, but 127GB in another
All drives are set to UFS, no particians are set, I don’t think anything is set differently from default etc.
I must apologise for giving you all this - I’m just scratching my head - Could the cause just be a cable issue ?
March 1st, 2007 at 11:10 am
I’m going to implement a FreeNAS server in my house. I plan on using an older box, a Compact Flash card (w/ CF to IDE adapter) as the FreeNAS home drive and whatever disks I have laying around as storage. I’m a newbie to this and I’ve been playing around w/ FreeNAS in a VM.
Questions:
1- Has anyone had success implementing a RAID setup in FreeNAS? Recommended?
2- On a typical windows box, I create two partitions- one for Windows and the other strictly for data. So if Windows crashes, it won’t take my data out. Can a similar setup be accomplished w/ FreeNAS? Since I’m not sure to how recover a crashed partition (just reinstall FreeNAS?), I’m not 100% comfortable w/ it yet.
Any advice or tips for a newbie? Thanks! -Jason
July 7th, 2007 at 10:47 am
i am trying to get my freenas working on an old computer i have at home, i have 3 hard drives that all have data on them, and are preformatted in ntfs. the problem i am having is getting them to mount. is there a way to mound drives without having to reformat the entire drive?