Can i make a TrueNAS server with Regular or Surveillance drives?

TrueNAS General
1

i dont plan on running them 24x7. more like 12 hours a day. I want to use RaidZ on them… for immich, jellyfin, pihole, wireguard and whatever else.

Red drives are expensive in india and it doesnt even come in 2 TB sizes at an appropriate cost. I figured i need about 6TB of storage… so a raid Z1, 4 x 2 tb drives.

Just want to know if i can use WD blue/Seagate barracuda/Toshiba p300, which is SMR. or any surveillance drives which is CMR…

2

Hi and welcome to the forums.

I’d keep away from the SMR drives but CMR would be fine.

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My raidz2 has a mix of reds, purples (which are surveillance drives) and ironwolves. Been running fine.

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what if i cant afford the cmr drives? should i not make the nas at all?

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As long as the drives are CMR and not SMR drives they should be mostly fine.

Seagate Baracuda and WD Reds are 99% SMR drives and unfit for use with zfs/truenas.

Edit:
Nascompares has a neat searchable list

6

problem is, everything in my budget is SMR… what should i do?

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If you’re going to use ZFS (TrueNAS for example), then you should not use SMR. Lots of horror stories…

This is going to be the answer no one likes; save up & wait - or try to see 2nd hand market.

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ok. if i do go CMR, does it HAVE to be Red drives? Will any of those surveillance drives do?

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It does NOT have to be WD RED - any decent brand will do fine. Just make sure it is CMR

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so… CMR surveillace drivbes will do too? like WD purple of Seagate Skyhawk?

Any downsides??

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I use a wd purple i my pool and it is working fine

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any downsides to those surveillance ones? im thinking WD Purple or Seagate skyhawk. both CMR from 4TB.

im looking for say… troubled playback from jellyfin or something

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do you stream from them? looking for troubled playback from jellyfin or plex something

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I access the movies using kodi running on a raspberry pi. I also stream sometimes with Jellyfin. Working fine.

You will be fine with purple drives. Just do not buy them from a single retailer at the same time and make sure you run a full smart and surface tests when you get them.

15

wait why not?

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If a bad batch, less chance they all die same time

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In case it is a bad batch and the drives went through the same shipping conditions, …etc.

Just trying to decrease the possibility of drives failing at the same time.

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18

To surveillance drives? No. They are designed to run in NAS, and all 3.5" surveillance/PVR I know of are CMR.

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i meant to more in playback of jellyfin/plex videos…

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should i mix brands then? maybe a WD and a seagate surveillance drives, with a seagate nas drive? i want 3 x 4tb ones