# ZFS on a netbook with 2 GB RAM and CPU Intel Atom N280?



## Kalero (Mar 30, 2021)

Hi,

I'm thinking of installing FreeBSD 13 on a little netbook I have (Sony Vaio Mini VPCW12J1E) and I wonder if it would be a good idea to install it on ZFS. The netbook has 2 GB RAM (it originally came with 1 GB but I upgraded it to 2 GB) and CPU Intel Atom N280.

What would you recommend?

Thanks.


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## Argentum (Mar 30, 2021)

Kalero said:


> I'm thinking of installing FreeBSD 13 on a little netbook I have (Sony Vaio Mini VPCW12J1E) and I wonder if it would be a good idea to install it on ZFS. The netbook has 2 GB RAM (it originally came with 1 GB but I upgraded it to 2 GB) and CPU Intel Atom N280.
> 
> What would you recommend?


You can give it a try. I think it is all right. I am running ZFS on Bhyve VM-s (yes, on VM-s, not only on the main machine). My VM-s are usually small with just 2Gigs of RAM. ZFS works just fine.


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## Kalero (Mar 30, 2021)

Thanks for your reply, Argentum.

By the way, the netbook has BIOS and the disk has an MBR partition table. Is it possible to create the ZFS pool in the free space alongside the Windows installation which is already there, considering it's a BIOS/MBR environment?

Thanks.


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## Argentum (Mar 30, 2021)

Kalero said:


> By the way, the netbook runs with BIOS and the disk has an MBR partition table. Is it possible to create the ZFS pool in the free space alongside the Windows installation which is already there?


You should search this forum about FreeBSD* multi-boot.*


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## scottro (Mar 30, 2021)

Yes, it's a little tricky, but not terribly hard. patovm04 has a tutorial on it with UEFI, but I would think you can modify that to use it with BIOS boot.








						[UEFI/GPT] [Dual-Boot] How to install FreeBSD (with ZFS) alongside another OS (sharing the same disk)
					

Important notes: 1) This tutorial assumes you have the OS you want to dual-boot with already installed on your drive, and that you already have freed up some disk space. Essentially, you will be installing FreeBSD with root-on-ZFS on the remaining free space of the disk, instead of using the...




					forums.freebsd.org


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## Kalero (Mar 30, 2021)

scottro said:


> Yes, it's a little tricky, but not terribly hard. patovm04 has a tutorial on it with UEFI, but I would think you can modify that to use it with BIOS boot.
> 
> 
> 
> ...


Yeah... I had already looked at that tutorial, but he explicitly says it only works for UEFI/MBR environments.


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## ralphbsz (Mar 30, 2021)

I successfully run a small server with an Atom D525 (a bit bigger) with 3GB of memory, using ZFS. No problems. Obviously not the ideal setup, but I think it will work.


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## dbuckhal (Nov 4, 2021)

Just hopping back into the world of FreeBSD, found my old post from 2010 where I was thinking of installing FreeBSD 8 on my Toshiba Netbook (2GB RAM).  Welp, scrapped it then, but after cleaning the dust off of the old NetBook, I plugged in an SSD drive and did a fresh install of FreeBSD 13.  It is now my little SMB file server.

Install went well on ZFS, installed Xorg, and after a reboot was able to "startx" my way to a TWM session.  Like the Handbook stated, no need to run "Xorg -configure" unless necessary, and I did not need to.

Anyway, am not planning on any processor intense activity, but just wanted to post my success with a NetBook: Toshiba NB305-N310

I had a FreeBSD/Windows dual-boot years ago, which worked great, but I do not feel I can provide much input regarding that.  I believe Windows was primary OS, used a live cd to adjust the partition to make room for FreeBSD.  After the BSD and grub install, tweaked the grub config and menu.lst, to include Windows.  I believe I need to rescue boot Windows to fix the MBR so that Windows would once again be the primary boot OS... Anyway, it eventually all "just worked" great with a grub boot menu.

Fun times...

edit: removed unnecessary code blocks


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