[Anton338]

So, I've spent the past two weeks learning about software-raid and all the various NAS systems out there. Here's what I've come up with...

Since intel's announcement of the 12th generation processors, I decided I'm going to upgrade everything on my daily PC but instead of scrapping the old parts, I was able to build this cool TrueNAS. For many years I've relied on two 1TB drives in hardware raid1 to store all my crap, but lately I've come close to filling that up and I wanted to future proof my storage a little bit and add network capability. This new build reuses my i7-860, Gigabyte GA-P55A-UD3, 12GB of ram and my 650W corsair PSU. Packaged it all into a new Fractal Designs Define R5 and added four Seagate Barracuda 4TB drives. It's nothing fancy and none of the drives are NAS rated, but it's got the redundancy I want and the additional space I need. Plus, it'll make my new build that much lighter and quieter.

The installation was a little challenging on this board. The old P55A-UD3 doesn't support UEFI, so I had to install TrueNAS 11 first, then upgrade to the latest stable version of TrueNAS 12. A few permissions errors and several tutorials later, I had the 4x4TB pool running in raid-z2 with a total raw size of 6.8TB. The Import Disk utility ran overnight and copied all my data from the 1TB into the pool. Total power consumption is a little bit under 100W at idle. Hoping to get another ten years out of this processor!

 

[Gandyman]

Thats really awesome! How do you find TrueNAS? Or rather how would you rate its accessibility to a new user?

 

[Anton338]

Thats really awesome! How do you find TrueNAS? Or rather how would you rate its accessibility to a new user?

Good question. On my last computer, I used to run a hardware raid1 through the motherboard's BIOS utility off the Intel chipset. It worked fine and I can't say anything bad about it, but when searching specifically for solutions that offer network connectivity, there's not many out there. You either pay out of the ass for a Synology, use OpenMediaVault on a Linux distro, or TrueNAS. And since I'm already running a pihole/DHCP/DNS server off a separate Raspberry Pi, I decided not to overlap the two in Linux.

While it may have been the more complicated route, I learned a lot in the process and encourage anyone to try it. Still learning about the way permissions and groups are managed. Don't fear the complexity, there's lots of YouTube tutorials that can get you started.

 

[Gandyman]

Good question. On my last computer, I used to run a hardware raid1 through the motherboard's BIOS utility off the Intel chipset. It worked fine and I can't say anything bad about it, but when searching specifically for solutions that offer network connectivity, there's not many out there. You either pay out of the ass for a Synology, use OpenMediaVault on a Linux distro, or TrueNAS. And since I'm already running a pihole/DHCP/DNS server off a separate Raspberry Pi, I decided not to overlap the two in Linux.

While it may have been the more complicated route, I learned a lot in the process and encourage anyone to try it. Still learning about the way permissions and groups are managed. Don't fear the complexity, there's lots of YouTube tutorials that can get you started.

I just have a storage pool in windows server 2019 for my network storage. I know nothing about raid solutions however, and wonder how bad Microsoft's "free" or rather "Included" option is over something more bespoke. If I manage to find some time I may try it, although my wife and daughter won't be happy with the media serve offline for however long it takes, And I would probably need to spend quite a bit of coin on new NAS drives (If I'm going to transfer all the data to a new system)

 

[Anton338]

Replaced all four drives with WD Red Plus CMR disks. Seagate Barracuda drives are dogshit for this.

 

[shilka]

Replaced all four drives with WD Red Plus CMR disks. Seagate Barracuda drives are dogshit for this.

The WD Red´s are not much better they are the second worst drives after the Barracuda´s at least from my experience as the only drive i had fail in the last 10 years were WD Red´s
The WD Red Pro´s are somewhat better but from my experience the Ironwolf / Ironwolf Pro and Exos are the most reliable

Never had a major problem with an Ironwolf or Exos other than one being damaged due to a power cut but i got upgraded to an 18 TB from the 16 TB i had for free so cant complain

WD also has a strange habit of not having their drives report all parameters to software like CrystalDiskInfo or Hard Drive Sentinel where Seagate does have all parameters reported

 

[Anton338]

God ****ing damn it.

 

[maddangerous]

Nice!

I would advise more ram if you can ifnd some though. ARC loves RAM, it's free real estate.
did you install TrueNAS core or scale? I'd think core if you started on 11.

 

[sultanofswing]

I'v been running truenas on a Dell R730XD for a few years now, I love it and I have it setup using a 10gbe network in my home.
I like it because I no longer have the need to keep anything on my main PC I can just keep it all on the server.
I migrated over to trunas scale and I prefer it over core personally.

 

[maddangerous]

I'v been running truenas on a Dell R730XD for a few years now, I love it and I have it setup using a 10gbe network in my home.
I like it because I no longer have the need to keep anything on my main PC I can just keep it all on the server.
I migrated over to trunas scale and I prefer it over core personally.

Do you have a link to your build?
I'll have to make a thread for mine lol

Why do you prefer scale over core?

 

[sultanofswing]

No link as it's not something I find really all that entertaining to most.
I prefer scale since it's debian vs freebsd.
I believe scale will eventually take over core.

 

[maddangerous]

Got specs?

I too prefer debian (and its variants) but i wanted the stability of freebsd.
I do agree. the jails in core didn't really feel like the caught on, and I certainly didn't care for it (but I had a cluster of servers to run containers and VM's so I really didn't need it)