The Breaking Point: Slow Transfer Speeds
So after a few months of using FreeNAS I’ve decided I can’t live with the insanely slow transfer speeds. Unfortunately FreeNAS is built on FreeBSD and has a terrible port of SAMBA service. It’s so slow it’s painful!
I’m not bashing on the developers, they’ve done a fantastic job with the tools provided to them under FreeBSD, I just think the call to use FreeBSD was a bad one, especially when the software is supposed to be a NAS and has a known poor implementation of SAMBA.
Better Alternatives for Home NAS
At any rate, it’s my opinion that anyone who is technical stay away from FreeNAS and just utilize Ubuntu server or the like. For those who are not technical, I’d suggest Microsoft’s Home Server, it’s performance on file transfers smokes FreeNAS and it’s fairly moron-proof.
My Decision: Ubuntu Server 10.4
As for me, I’m installing Ubuntu Server 10.4 and never looking back. My goal was to evaluate FreeNAS and it’s core purpose was file storage which means lots of file transfers and that’s the one thing it sucks the most at…sorry FreeNAS, I’ve found another and I’ll never look back…..
Final Thoughts and Recommendations
So if you’ve been following my FreeNAS posts, you know I gave FreeNAS a fair shot, if you haven’t been following along, let me save you some time by saying don’t waste your time with FreeNAS. If you are just in love with the idea of FreeNAS wait for OMV (Open Media Vault)….