Install Truenas on Laptop - Suspend mode ?

TrueNAS General
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Hello, I have read a little so far and I am not sure if I have understood the information correctly.

  1. TrueNas cannot be installed on a USB stick?
    I have read that it is theoretically possible but you should move the logs to an internal HDD because of the accesses. But I couldn’t find any instructions on how to install Truenas on a USB stick

  2. i have now installed it on an old laptop for testing. As soon as I close the lid, the laptop goes into sleep mode. I have not found anything to disable this behavior. Is that possible?

  3. i plan to replace my Synology Nas
    3.1 Can I use a HDD enclosure where I use 2x12TB hard disks in Raid 1 mode which is connected to the laptop via USB?
    3.2 What alternative would there be to usb connection?

I have 3 miniservers here that I would like to replace. An old Synology Nas with 4x4TB IronWolf currently serves as storage. However, I have to back up the data first, as it is operated in SHR1. Therefore, as I have read, I cannot simply use it with TrueNas.

If I don’t replace the servers, then all I really need is a storage that makes the data available to my servers. However, I don’t know how best to realize this.
A laptop with Truenas and connect the hard disks via usb?
A Raspberry Pi? I don’t need any powerful hardware, as my servers actually take care of it.

Maybe someone can help me

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The same way you’d install it on any other device. But as you already know, it’s a bad idea.

Don’t close the lid? Really, nothing about that is a good environment for TrueNAS.

No.

Actual suitable hardware.

I’m not sure what it is, but it isn’t this:

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I was edit this file /etc/systemd/logind.conf and add:
HandleLidSwitch=ignore - I found that here: askubuntu

And it seems working. For my tests its a good way. Its not a live System and just for testing and learning.

Why you say “no” ? It is really not possible to connect a 3,5" HDD case with 2 HDDs about USB and use it as pool?
USB connection is bit more slow but it is in genereal not possible yeah ?

If i need think about a different way.
Maybe i backup all my synology data to external hdd and recreate the pool from shr1 to raid5 (4HDDs and 1 for failure)

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Technically possible, but a very bad idea. See:

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fair.

Can you recommend any hardware that will make my goals achievable?
A network storage that makes the data available via SMB or NFS for my servers?
An enclosure for 3.5” hdds or an alternative to my Synology DS414?

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A NAS in and of itself, serving network files does not need much CPU.
Pentium D’s, N100s that sort of thing will all run a NAS extremely well.

The problem comes when you start to add containers, iSCSI and VM’s - all of which use extra memory and CPU.

Building your own NAS will likley cost more than an equivalent Synology - but you (normally) get more CPU/Memory and options from doing a DIY

As others have said - do not use USB, or those cheap and nasty PCIe X1 to SATA cards.

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My situation is that i have already a few Server with n100 and enough ram.

I just need a case or something else to serve.

But I think I understood: it’s better to buy a hardware as a complete nas system and use it as build it on my own without enough know how :sweat_smile:

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How many drives? Any other need?
There are many build threads here and on the old forum, including one specifically on small NAS cases. You may find some ideas there.

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The Sabrent 10-bay powered enclosure works extremely well. SATA-III drives require no trays or tools to install, but you need adapter trays (about $10 each) and a screwdriver to insert 2.5" SSDs into the enclosure. Notably, the enclosure can power individual drives on and off, and seems to do a good job with power distribution and cooling. The enclosure supports drive spin-down and appears to support various drive power modes and spin-up groups, but I don’t set them to avoid latency issues or other potential problems.

The primary downside is that the enclosure has only a single USB-C 3.2 Gen. 1 port (10 Gbps), so you can’t daisy chain and shouldn’t expect Thunderbolt 3 speeds, but considering the backplane is designed for HDD drives that max out at 6 Gbps, even with an 8-wide RAIDZ2 plus a 2-wide BTRFS SSD pair for read cache I don’t find it all that limiting even over 2.5 GbE.

Make sure you use a short USB cable (it comes with both C-to-C and C-to-A cables) to avoid speed loss over longer runs, and that the upstream USB port can handle 10 Gbps. I’ve had other issues with Scale 24.04 and 24.10, but using a USB enclosure is absolutely not one of them.

Here’s a link to the Sabrent 10-bay enclosure on Amazon. You may find better deals elsewhere or on Black Friday, or bigger or faster enclosures, but it’s a good brand and has been very stable for me even with an inexpensive mini-PC to run it. YMMV.

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For use with ZFS, do not use USB enclosures.
Go for SAS shelves or genuine SATA enclosures, such as this or the 8-bay version, and a SAS HBA.

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Just an update on my own build. This enclosure continues to work very reliably for me, but only so long as I don’t employ any of the host computer’s power-saving features, Features that spin down drives or put USB and Ethernet links into low power states can offline the drives from a TrueNAS perspective, so don’t do that!

On the other hand, all of my other DAS systems have no power saving features whatsoever, so I don’t consider this a real problem. I just thought I’d point it out to anyone who was thinking of trying to save a few nickels in power consumption. If you specifically need that, UnRAID supports spindown and spinup groups for SATA controllers even over USB, but I’m not sure that it supports PCIe, NVMe, or Ethernet power states. I could never get unRAID working properly anyway, which is why I went with TrueNAS. I’m mentioning it only to say that such things can be supported but aren’t the use case for which TrueNAS was designed.

You don’t have to overclock anything. Just don’t chase “low power modes.”