NucBox G3 Mini-PC Possible For TrueNAS?

TrueNAS General
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I got a UGREEN DXP4800+ up and running with TrueNAS recently. Works great, yay! It has two 1tb SSDs as a fast pool for syncing Documents, Desktop, and other common use folders using Syncthing, plus a pair of 4tb HDDs I plan to use for cold storage of photos, old projects, and ripped DVDs. (The entire Psych collection is first on the list.) Cool beans.

I also have a little GmkTek NucBox G3 minipc. Intel N100 processor, 8gb of RAM (or 16gb with a quick swap), two NVME slots and a bunch of USB ports. Bought it on a whim and now it’s sitting on a shelf. I was thinking of putting Debian on it, adding a 1tb NVME drive configured with a ZFS pool, then installing Syncthing and Tailscale. I even found a little 12V UPS I think will work with it. I could leave it at my parents’ as a remote backup of the fast pool because…

RAID IS NOT A BACKUP!!! the class screams in a furor. (I also make backups of my files on external drives periodically.)

So, question:

It occurred to me at 4am that I could put TrueNAS on a flash drive, add a second flash drive for a couple of apps, then use a pair of 1tb gumsticks in a mirror as a backup of my fast pool. G3 NAS: tiny, janky little TrueNAS box sitting quietly on a shelf.

Sooooo…

All right-ish idea? Bad idea? You fail the test get out of my class idea? I know TrueNAS is designed for heavier hardware, and a minipc isn’t exactly a 12-bay beastNAS. Would something like this work well enough to be reliably useful, or am I just asking for a facepalm in 6 weeks?

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Flashdrives in the form of thumb drives are a bad idea. They are usually cheap and nasty and ZFS will tend to destroy them. Frankly they are asking to lose whatever data is on them

Using a USB to SATA or USB to NVMe adapter is a better choice although the quality of those adapters can vary.

Using a USB to SATA/NVMe adapter is an OK method of booting. Its not perfect and depends on the adapter quality (which you won’t know till you try it for a while), but its only the boot pool thats at risk and that doesn’t matter so much (assuming you have a backup of the config file)

Using USB for an active data pool is not something I would do. It tends to go wrong. Its OK using a single disk for backups - but not anything else.

In your case use a couple of larger gumsticks in the data pool and using that pool as your apps pool as well.

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tl;dr
Get a pair of M.2 NVMe for your pool (mirror) in the NUC. Apps and backups.
For boot, get a small SSD (SATA or NVMe) and a suitable USB adapter for it.