FreeNAS vs. Unraid Which Is Best for Your Storage Needs?

1. How much RAM does Unraid need?
2. How much space does FreeNAS need?
3. Should I use Unraid?
4. How reliable is FreeNAS?
5. How many drives do you need for unRAID?
6. How much RAM do I need for media server?
7. Can FreeNAS run on 2GB RAM?
8. Can FreeNAS run on 4GB RAM?
9. Why does ZFS use so much RAM?
10. How do I speed up Unraid?
11. Is Unraid a hypervisor?
12. What file system does Unraid use?

How much RAM does Unraid need?

If the sole purpose of your Unraid system is to act as a traditional NAS (no plugins, virtual machines, or Docker containers), system requirements are minimal: 2GB of RAM (although 4GB or more is recommended) 64-bit capable processor.

How much space does FreeNAS need?

The FreeNAS® operating system is installed to at least one device that is separate from the storage disks. The Operating System Device can be an SSD, a small hard drive, or a USB stick. We recommend a minimum size of 8GB. A device with 16GB or more provides additional room for boot environments.

Should I use Unraid?

Unraid is great as a media storage however if you want to have any sort of high performance storage I definitely suggest freenas. Unraid is easier to upgrade down the road. Really though I usually suggest unraid to people because of 96% of the time it will suit their needs.

How reliable is FreeNAS?

Freenas was a perfect fit, as it supports NFS, SMB, and ISCSI sharing. I use FreeNAS on old hardware, and it is extremely reliable. It uses a USB stick to boot from, which leaves all the internal data ports available for storage.

How many drives do you need for unRAID?

Unraid can be configured to have up to two parity drives. Similar to traditional RAID this will prevent data loss if up to two drives die keeping your data safe.

How much RAM do I need for media server?

In general, Plex Media Server doesn't require large amounts of RAM. 2GB of RAM is typically more than sufficient and some installs (particularly Linux-based installs) can often happily run with even less.

Can FreeNAS run on 2GB RAM?

Yes. Most commercial NAS boxes have about 2GB of RAM (some just 1 GB). Remember to use it just for NAS, and install a lightweight OS like FreeNAS.

Can FreeNAS run on 4GB RAM?

FreeNAS can indeed run in 4GB of RAM : freenas.

Why does ZFS use so much RAM?

Apparently it's the deduplication feature that requires lots of RAM See Oracle documentation. ZFS only support block-level deduplication, and if dedup is turned on, you will need approximately 320 Bytes per block per core. This makes the resulting RAM consumption a bit tricky.

How do I speed up Unraid?

Hard Drives

1. PCI and PCIE. ...
2. Use Cache Drive. ...
3. Move Parity Drive Off PCI Bus. ...
4. Assign Disk slots for Performance. ...
5. Move Largest and Fastest Data Drives Off PCI Bus. ...
6. Parity Check Speed. ...
7. Remove SATA150 Jumper. ...
8. Update nameserver & hosts file.

Is Unraid a hypervisor?

Unraid runs as a virtualization host, leveraging a hypervisor to partition resources to virtualized guests in a secure and isolated manner. VMs can be assigned a wider array of resources than Docker containers but still offer isolated access.

What file system does Unraid use?

Unraid