Greetings all.
I've decided to put together a NAS from spare parts I have accumulated over the years. My system seems to meet the hardware requirements (see below). It will be used principally as a media server for occasional use and a place to back up some files. It will not be on 24/7 or see heavy use. The only parts I needed were some hard drives, and therein lies the problem. I invested in 6 x WD 4TB SMR drives with the intention of using them under Truenas. I learned after the fact that SMR and Truenas file system (ZFS) do not play nicely together, so I have gone in search of a Nas OS that does. I believe it can be done under Unraid, if the data is mostly read only and my parity drive is a CMR of the same size (4TB). Is this in fact doable?
The second issue is Unraid requires the ability to boot from a USB stick: That is a problem for me: For some reason, I cannot get my system to boot from a USB device. The motherboard should be able to boot from a USB device, but for some reason it will not. If I plug in a USB device at any point of the POST process, the system will lock up. If i boot without a USB device plugged in, and go into the bios, at any time if i plug in a USB device, the Bios will freeze up. Strangely, there is no issue with my USB keyboard or mouse being plugged in. So this is another hurdle I must clear before considering Unraid (or is there a way to run Unraid on anything else (ie a SSD). My research says no, at least, no simple way to do so.
Unraid seems to be very flexible, intuitive and I am hoping I can go ahead with this project. Any recommendation on these two issues would be greatly appreciated.
Sys. specs
CPU: i5-750
GPU: 525W
Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4P rev. 01
Bios: Award Modular Bios v 6.00PG (non-UEFI) F14
Memory: DDR3 1333 - 2 x 8GB
HD's: 6 x WD Red SMR 4TB drives, 1 x WD Red Plus CMR drive