# realistic boot drive size



## Cablet (Apr 30, 2018)

Hi,
I'm building my first FreeBSD system from scratch and the motherboard I'm currently thinking of using is the Supermicro X10SRL-F. It supports two SATA DOM drives. If I do use the DOM devices (going for redundancy), I'm wondering if they will be large enough for the FreeBSD boot drive. I'm thinking of the 32GB units. The purpose of this build will be a file server and I'll probably move my Plex server off my aging FreeNAS box as well. I'll have 80TB (8x10TB) of storage using ZFS raidz2. I'll be using just one 1 Gb NIC and maybe upgrade to 10 Gb in the future.

I've read the user guide which recommends at least 8 GB of storage. Is 32 GB plenty?  My FreeNAS has 16 GB and I'm getting warning's that it's almost full.

Also, I guess I should ask, should I just stick with FreeNAS?  My co-workers recommend FreeBSD but they are all power users (I'm not yet).

Thanks for any input.


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## rigoletto@ (Apr 30, 2018)

PC-BSD, FreeNAS, NAS4Free, and all other FreeBSD Derivatives

Other than that, unless when I plan something specific that would need more space, I usually do not give more than 25GB for / (separated $HOME) and always were plenty. For FreeNAS 8GB should be more than enough, I guess (I never used FreeNAS).

The FreeNAS installation (talking about the FreeNAS itself not the stored data) should not grow spectacularly (but switching from a version to another, may be). I guess your one should be full of logs or something like that - or you installed too much extra stuff.

About Plex, please be aware of Thread 38162.

Btw, with ZFS you should be really more concerned with RAM, specially if you plan to use deduplication. And please, always use ECC RAM.


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## Cablet (May 1, 2018)

Thanks for the info. I'm planning on 32GB (16GB x2) of ECC RAM and the motherboard has 8 slots so I'll have room to grow if needed.


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## PacketMan (May 3, 2018)

I use a smaller sized boot drive for the OS, and then all my document, media, files, etc, are stored on a second drive. Mount that one like /nasdrive, or /mymedia, or whatever name you like.

Regarding Plex may I also suggest reading this: Thread 63163

Regardless which you use, (I use Emby now, but still have Plex installed for the moment) I store my media on the 'nas disk' and configure Plex/Emby accordingly.  I am even considering now, for my still-to-be-built-new-headless-home-server a 3rd drive dedicated solely for video transcoding. I'm considering SSD for that, but there is that issue of limited number of writes. IF SSD is bad for swap drive, then surely it must be bad as a transcoding drive too. So maybe I will use a fast spin magnetic disk.

Back to this:


lebarondemerde said:


> About Plex, please be aware of Thread 38162.


.....I turned off the "Update my library automatically" setting and turned on the "Update my library periodically" setting, and have it set to 6 hours; you can go as low as 15 minutes, but that might make a lower powered machine a tad busy.

Sorry I talk too much sometimes.


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## MarcoB (May 3, 2018)

Depends on how you want your filesystems laid out. My / filesystem is 1GB, and of that is only 30% in use. So the / or /boot doesn't need to be big.


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## gnath (May 4, 2018)

I also have 1GB for / including boot. As per experts here all depends on your use case & choice of file system. Formal GUI system requires 20 GB excluding /home. I have seen use of RAM 2-4 GB for mine. For use of port system 60 GB is good for standard use. Fair use of SW.


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