TrueNAS Newb. Wanting to Build a Home NAS

TrueNAS General
41

If I wanted 20TB of usuable space. What would be the ideal HDD Pool Configuration?

4x 10TB?

42

Since you should only fill a ZFS pool to about 80%, I would aim for 25TB.

43

Assuming raidz2 for decent resiliency,

  • 4*10 TB = 20 TB raw (minus ZFS metadata…), ca. 16 TB usable (80%)
  • 5*10TB = 30 TB raw, ca. 24 TB usable
  • 4*12 TB = 24 raw, ca. 19 TB usable

…you can go on with other drive sizes. The price per TB of what you can find right now is bound to be a major consideration.
80% is not a hard limit, and depends on your use (if the pool is always accreting data without deletions, you may reach 90% without issues; if data comes and go, 80% may bee too relaxed), but it is a useful guidance for when you should think hard about extending, enlarging or rebuilding.

44

Does TrueNAS Scale use BTRFS or Ext4?

45

ZFS only.

46

Is there any significant difference between normal RAID and RAIDZ except of coure of RAIDZ being ZFS?

47

There is online documentation where almost all your questions are answered.

There is also the Resources category

48

All storage in TrueNAS is ZFS. Not only RAIDZ but also mirrors and single disks. You cannot use any other file system.

49

Is there any significant difference between an elephant and an elephant seal, except of course one being a seal?

Not the same animal at all…

50

Are the IronWolfs reliable or are they a no, no?

Looking at x2 12TB Seagate 3.5″ 7200rpm SATA IronWolf HDD PN ST12000VN0008.

I know that WD is supposed to be the go to. Have had WD Blues (for non NAS used and they have been good. Maybe some bit-rot on one file).

51

Why would they not be reliable?

Again, why? After the “5400 rpm class” labelling and the sneaking of SMR drives in the NAS line some years ago, WD is definitively the one manufacturer I’d personally prefer to avoid if I have a choice.

52

i used to do that but then i realized that my NAS (=fnOS) can host VMs and containers (just like pve). so i am not running my fnOS mainly, with two VMs (=alpine and debian) from which I run dockhand to manage my containers. very handy.

re. backups: my content lives locally and on a NAS server. I then have a backup server that I ran once a week which replicates the NAS server.

All are low spec machines: my main NAS server was a 2-core SC440 and now a T3600. My backup server is a T3500 now. Space matters. spec doesn’t → for me.

53

HGST which I used a lot got bought out by WD, so they’ve integrated their helios tech to the enterprise class drives. I’ve had good luck with them where Seagate I’ve had less reliability. I mean it holds through warranty, but the WD drives I use tend to hold well past their warranties where the Seagate drives I have all died shortly after their warranty period.
With prices being what they are, I’m not as picky as my hdds and will give it a go as long as the warranty terms are reasonable.

54

Which one should I go for?

I can get these for the exact same price here where I am:

  • 12TB Seagate 3.5" 7200rpm SATA IronWolf Pro HDD ST12000NT001
  • 12TB WD 3.5" SATA Red Pro HDD WD122KFBX
55

Your personal choice, really…
(Mine is stated above, but it really is a personal matter, and if I were building an array of 12 TB drives I would probably snap both drives if only to already have a spare.)

56

As much as I hate WD for that stunt with SMR in NAS drives, the WD Red Plus and Pro have been nothing but reliable everywhere I use them.

Seagate Ironwolf have given me very strange SMART readings leading to false alerts e.g. in Scrutiny.

So I would buy the WDs.

57

Looks like this Drive is CMR according to NASCompares.

58

What about the Heat/Power/Noise and other differences?

59

Red Plus and Pro are CMR, yes.

60

After years of avoiding Seagate drives I bought 2 of those drives because they are (or should be) condiderably more silent (20dB vs 34dB on idle) than WD drives I found. Initially I had them installed in a noise dampening desktop case, but the idle spinning noise was constantly noticeable. I am now using the drives in a Terramaster F4-425, and the drives are only noticeable with heavy random access.

Unfortunately one of the drives died after 2 months and I’m currently waiting for a warranty replacement.

Edit: Drive temperature is roughly 44°C in the Terramaster case.