New member to well versed in Computer Hardware and I’ve been reading more and more about this TrueNAS (or FreeNAS or UnRAID)
But I’ll keep it to just TrueNAS for now…
Short Hx
I’ve had a Windows server machine using for many many years and had to upgrade it a few years ago.
I have have a RAID 5 and RAID 1 (7 disks on the array) for a while but just storing Docs/Videos/Media/Movies like any server
I have had a HW RAID controller but it has failed recently and generally they are not well supported (the LSI one I have has had 4 different companies “support” it but with minimal versatility or updates in drivers, firmware and the management software.
Geez the Management software…is complete ASS
So I am curious as to try at least this TrueNAS that I have been reading more about…
I understand it essentially is it’s own OS and takes 2 drives? to run it smoothly
But otherwise from what I’ve seen (YT) so far once setup and established seems to be a viable and supported solution. I am again just really storing files and using media across my home network.
So I’ll leave it to you TrueNAS experts to let me know if it may be worth the plunge.
Thanks in advance and let me know if you need more details for my Hardware…
TrueNAS (like FreeNAS before it) installs onto its own boot device, which is only used as the boot device. You need at least one other drive (and more than one is highly recommended, for the sake of redundancy) for data storage.
So you only need 1 boot drive to run it at all, but highly recommended to not have any partitions or cleverness; just get a single cheap boot drive. Some folks run two boot drives in a mirror for some redundancy.
As far as hardware raid cards, avoid using them with truenas. Software raid wants full control of the storage; either directly to motherboard or theough an hba card flashes to IT mode.
Otherwise, I think Truenas is a perfect solution for everything you want. Only painful part is setting up persions/shares the first time.
Lotta useful start up info on the forums for hardware recommendations, scheduled tasks, apps, vms, etc. etc. etc
Sure…
I am aware not to use HW RAID and TrueNAS, FreeNAS, UnRAID all those types of solutions; have seen folks talk about NOT using even Windows with TrueNAS and let it run on it’s own…
I’ll have to look more at hardware setups…
I have all the components as far as I can tell…
I technically already had 9 drives in a old chassis running the Win 2016 Server OS
So I would just wipe the SSDs I was using to run Windows and run TrueNAS eh?
also I would be using it as a Storage/Media server so file transfer speeds and data rates aren’t an issue correct?
I have a 10GB network so it wouldn’t be the hardware that is limiting data
I’m not sure how you’d anticipate using “Windows with TrueNAS.” TrueNAS is its own operating system, not an application that runs under some other OS. Note also that “FreeNAS” no longer exists; it was replaced by TrueNAS 12 around five years ago.
