Originally posted by: Knavish
Originally posted by: Penth
Windows Home Server is the easiest server/backup system I've used. One namespace for all your storage (which you can do with DFS but you have to manage disk space) It backs up all my PCs every night, tells me if they haven't been backed up or if there's a problem with any of them, and I get 40MB/s transfer rates and faster. Forget Linux, FreeNAS, RAID-5 and all that other crap. If you have the money to spend on the big hard drives and you've got the data you need protected, just buy WHS, pay for an extra drive and be done with it. You'll never look back.
Oh yeah, and the remote access through yourname.homeserver.com is pretty awesome too.
BAH! where's the fun in that? If you have the desire to learn / expand your knowledge about linux, this is the perfect opportunity!
I've learned linux well enough for my needs. Installing FreeNAS is so easy you'd learn more setting up a WHS and learning to setup DFS. I guess if it's just for the person doing it they won't mind when FreeNAS bottlenecks their speeds and their system dies. If other people are going to be storing and accessing their files on this machine just get something that works - WHS. Play with FreeNAS on a VM.