Software advice

TrueNAS General
1

Hi
I am new to this forum and also new to NAS software etc.

My question is, can anyone advice me on what is the best software to download and install on my old PC to make it in to a NAS server?

I will be using my NAS server at home and no more than 4 devices will be conneted to the server.

The PC that i have is a Asus P5K motherboard with 8GB ram and i will be using upto 4 SATA drives with a total combined capacty of around 2TB.

The server may be connected to the main router by ethernet cable or wifiā€¦ not thought about that option yet.

Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Thank you

2

While you dont need the latest and gratest hardware for a NAS running Truenas, this mainboard is from probably around 2007. How old are the HDs ? You have to ask yourself, if you trust hardware that old to keep your data safe.

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3

This is the TrueNAS forum, so you should expect that the answer most here would give is ā€œTrueNASā€ā€“and it is, IMO, the best software to download and install on a suitable PC to make it into a NAS. Other popular free options are XigmaNAS (which grew out of a much earlier form of TrueNAS) and OpenMediaVault.

But ā€œsuitableā€ carries a bit of weight here. Your system is very old, and your drives very small. It will not be energy-efficient or performant. Itā€™s unclear whether it will even support the 8 GB of RAM that TrueNAS requires as a minimum. If you must use that hardware, XigmaNAS may be a better choice for software, but the better answer yet would be to use more-modern hardware.

4

If it has a Realtek NIC, neither CORE nor XigmaNAS are the best candidates. (No WiFi with TrueNAS.)
And FOUR drives for a TOTAL of 2 TBā€¦

This stuff is so old that it is only suitable as a playground to get a feel of various NAS OS. If you value your data, do not use it ā€œin productionā€.

5

I usually recommend Unraid to folks, just for its flexibility and relative ease of use.

But, it costs money.

6

Most all Nas servers require an ethernet cable. Iā€™ve installed four or five different types of network attached storage servers and I donā€™t know one of them that supports Wi-Fi.

In lieu of your very old Hardware you might consider getting a reasonably priced mini computer. You can get a mini computer that will work with truenas for a few hundred dollars. I use the internal drive for the operating system and have external SSD drives to handle the rest.

It will be a lot safer than using an old PC that you donā€™t use to even run Windows anymore.

7

Thank you for all your replies above.

You guys are right in what you are saying about using old tech to store data on.

I was just thinking about reusing old items that i have in my garage. But, common sense says NO! lol

What i meant about using the best software for data storage was more to do with what version of truenas to use. Not looking at another software suppliers other than Truenas.

Right, you guys have given me so much to think about regarding Hardwareā€¦

Thank you all for your help.

8

I suggest truenas scale. Iā€™ve been using it for about 6 months with good luck.

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9

Nothing fundamentally wrong with that, at least for a first NAS. But at some point old hardware is just TOO oldā€¦

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10

I started with Scale on an old Windows 7 laptop with only 4GB RAM and it worked fine as a learning machine.

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11

I think i am getting the ā€˜Too Old vibesā€™ for the hardware i have. For me, using ancient hardware will only cause issues in the futureā€¦ time to rethink i guess

Thanks

12

What specific features or benefits does TrueNAS offer that make it a preferred choice for network attached storage compared to other software options?

13

ZFS as the filesystem
Its free
A good community

1 Like
14

What a brilliant summary :clap:t2: