Best SSD/HDD Setup for Storage-Only Use? Terramaster F6-424 Max

TrueNAS General
1

Hi everyone,
I’m a new owner of a Terramaster F6-424 Max. After encountering several issues with TOS right from the first boot, I decided to switch immediately to TrueNAS, which seems much more stable and flexible for my needs.

Here’s my current setup:

  • 2 x 1TB SSD
  • 6 x 14TB HDD

My goal is to use the NAS exclusively for storage, mainly for archiving large files.
I’m planning to allocate the SSDs for:

  • TrueNAS installation (ideally with redundancy)
  • Hosting apps
  • Caching

The HDDs would be dedicated to long-term storage.

During my first test, I managed to assign the SSDs to the system, but unfortunately, they became unavailable for other uses—which is a pity, considering they’re high-performance drives.

:wrench: Questions for the community:

  • How do you recommend configuring the SSDs to maximize their utility without locking them entirely to the system?
  • Any best practices for separating system, apps, and cache on SSDs?
  • Suggestions for optimizing HDD usage for archival purposes?

Thanks in advance for any advice or shared experiences!
Luca

2

There are no official ways to partition the boot drive. It is also highly recommended against to do so.

The boot drive is seen as a throw away device. If it fails simply reinstall and restore with the config file (have always one saved somewhere).

You most likely will not benefit from any “cache” drives. In ZFS your RAM is your primary cache.

So use 1 cheap and small ssd as your boot device and 1-2 SSDs for Apps and VMs.

3

Thank you very much, @Farout, for the prompt feedback!

I noticed that during the TrueNAS installation process, the system actually recommends selecting more than one drive for redundancy. However, if saving the configuration file is enough to ensure a smooth recovery in case of failure, I’ll follow your advice and dedicate just one SSD to the system.

The second SSD will be used for apps—at the moment, I only plan to install a file manager, so the usage will be quite light.

I also wasn’t aware that assigning a drive for cache wouldn’t bring real performance benefits, given that ZFS relies primarily on RAM. That’s really helpful to know! I’ll definitely consider expanding the memory instead.

If you have any other valuable suggestions or best practices to keep in mind before I reconfigure the system, I’d really appreciate it.

Thanks again!

4

I wouldnt waste 1 TB as a boot drive.
Maybe you can boot from an external cheap SSD (not an USB stick ), and set up both 1 TB ssds in a mirror config.

Or if your apps will be on a single drive, set up a replication task of any app data to your HDD pool.

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5

@ziopanna
I am in the same situation as you, planning 2 x 1TB NVMe and 6 x 22TB HDD.
OS on NVMe with the rest of the SSD is for caching, HDD for data and archiving
How do you end up doing the setup of the storage with TrueNAS?

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You don’t do that. Boot drive is separate. We suggest a small SSD or NVMe connected with a USB adapter if you don’t have enough drive ports. (64GB-128GB is fine)

You would be bettter off using the 2x 1TB NVMe as a pool for application or a fast data pool. I doubt you would need L2ARC, especial 2TB of it. RAM is faster than L2ARC and big L2ARC devices just eat into RAM that could be used for regular ARC. See attached links.

Boot Drive

TrueNAS Systems pool layout whitepaper
https://www.truenas.com/solution-guides/#TrueNAS-PDF-zfs-storage-pool-layout/1/

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