Sanity Check Help with Switching from Synology to TrueNAS

TrueNAS General
1

Hey everyone,

Looking for some help making sure I’ve generally got this right, and a sanity check here with my transition plan.

I currently have a 4-bay Synology NAS that I’m looking at replacing with a DIY NAS. The current Synology array has 4x 10TB drives with one parity drive, for a usable space of 26.2TB. 21.5TB is currently used, I’ve tried slimming the data down as small as I can to facilitate moving it, can do more if really necessary, but it’s getting harder to prune unnecessary files now.

My goal is to add 2 more 10TB drives for now, but those obviously can’t fit in the current Synology box, and getting a larger one of those just doesn’t really make sense compared to a DIY box when I already have 3/4 of the hardware laying around to just build a system.

I’m trying to figure out what the best way to setup TrueNAS on the new hardware to facilitate moving the data over from the current drives, and then take those current 4 drives, format them, and add them to the TrueNAS array. Is there a way I can do this with only 2 new drives, or do I really need to get 3x 10TB drives to start on the TrueNAS side? Because it seems like that’s really what I need to do. And how should I set up the initial array to make the transition to the final array as smooth as possible?

As a side note, in case it makes a difference, the end goal is to move the Synology NAS files over to the TrueNAS system, and also recreating a bunch of Jellyfin/Radarr/Sonarr/etc. containers from a separate Proxmox box once the NAS files are transferred. Trying to consolidate these two separate systems into a single box. Just a small homelab and media server setup.

New TrueNAS system is going to be using a standard B550 mobo I’ve got laying around, looking at a Ryzen 5500 and 32GB of DDR4, and a PCIE SATA expansion card to add 12 SATA ports. The current 4x10TB drives are SATA, and don’t want to deal with adding SAS to the mix if I don’t have to.

I can provide other specific specs or information that would help clarify if needed. Trying to figure out what I actually need, with minimal cost here since its just for the house.

2

Do not use a PCIe SATA expansion card. You may find one that works, but they are problematic. You can find a SAS controller on ebay for $20-40. Get a couple SAS/SATA fanout cables and you suddenly have 8x more SATA.

I’m sure you know you’ll need to format the drives when adding to TrueNAS. It’s optimal to have the pool configured how you want it up front, to keep data evenly distributed across the disks/vdevs, but it’s not going to have a major impact on a home-use pool if you don’t.