FAQs
THIS PAGE IS NOT UP-TO-DATE AS MOST QUESTIONS ARE ALREADY ANSWERED IN THE DOCUMENTATION.
(The following questions are only a DRAFT for the Top 10 Q&A and are not in order of how frequently they're asked. Questions 7-9 are related)
Can I start with X number of disks and then add more later? (UFS vs. ZFS)
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How do I replace a bad drive - Can it be larger/smaller?
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I get "Error getting used space" or "The selected disks were not verified for this import rule" when trying to import, what's wrong?
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How do I setup permissions....?
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My Transfers are slow, hang after awhile, and/or I can't access the GUI or SSH, transfers burst then pause.
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How can I install packages for FreeBSD that are not included on FreeNAS®?
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How do I install FreeNAS® on a hard drive?
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Whenever I make changes to config files or settings on the root filesystem '/' they keep disappearing after a reboot, why?
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How do I clone my boot disk/USB flash disk?
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How do I backup or copy folders/datasets/files/snapshots to an external drive or copy an external drive to my FreeNAS® volume? (Rsync / Cron stuff)
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How do I upgrade from FreeNAS 7 to FreeNAS® 8.x?
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Where Do I Find PlugIns for FreeNAS® 8.2?
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Can I encrypt the data on FreeNAS?
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Can a RAID-Z array be expanded? For example, if I start off with a 8x2TB RAID-Z2 array can I add more drives to it in the future?
A. You can add drives to a volume, but not to a RAIDZ group. For example, if your volume is a 3 drive RAIDZ, you can add another 3 drive RAIDZ in the future, giving you a RAIDZ+0. But you can't change it to a 4 drive RAIDZ. This a limitation/feature of ZFS.
If my hardware/motherboard dies, can I rebuild with new/different hardware and still import/read the data from my disks? What about my datasets?
A. Yes, as long as you aren't using hardware RAID and let ZFS handle the RAID, A dataset is basically a folder/directory that lives on your volume with your other files, but which has a separate mount point, such as /mnt/your-pool/dataset_1.
A. No, at this time the GUI does not support this. This should be fixed in a later version.
Can I mount my MAC formatted drive?
A. No, at this time FreeNAS® and FreeBSD do not support mounting HFS/HFS+ filesystems.
My network transfer speeds are very slow, what is wrong?
A. You need to determine whether the bottleneck is your LAN, your disks/array/controller, not enough RAM, your CPU load, a misconfiguration, the type of share in use, or that some tuning is required.
- if you're using a 10-100Mb/s wired router/switch you should get somewhere around 11-12MB/s
- if you're transferring across the Internet, your speed will only be as fast as your slowest link
- if you're using a Gig interface, check that it is properly enabled on both the switch and the FreeNAS® system. To check the FreeNAS® system, run this command at the console:
ifconfig -a | grep media
If it is not showing at 1000Mb/s, add the following line to the Options field of the interface's settings: media 1000baseTX mediaopt full-duplex.
Why do changes I make at the command line to config files or settings disappear after a reboot?
A. FreeNAS® is booted from a compressed filesystem and the configuration that is stored in a database is loaded into RAM. Any changes made at the command line do not get added to the configuration database. While you can make changes persist using the tips in this forum post, those changes won't survive an upgrade and it is not recommended to manually add command line edits to the database. Instead, if the functionality you desire is not possible through the GUI, go to support.freenas.org and search to see if a feature request to add that functionality already exists. If there is no existing ticket, create a ticket describing the needed functionality.
