Hello
This is my first post ever here and I had hard time to find where to post this, so hopefully its the right categori. If not, just point me and I will post it in the right place and if possible remove this post.
Now to the post:
I started using FreeNAS many years ago for the datahealing abilities. All my data is on the server while I access it using SAMBA from my Windowsystem.
Due to different reasons (no backups …) I have not been jumping into every upgrade but rather waiting with upgrading. I did a few upgrades but then stayed on FreeNAS-11.0-U4 (54848d13b). I stayed so long on that version and now there is no more FreeNAS but TrueNAS. The plan is not to stay on FreeNAS forever but upgrade to TrueNAS in the easiest safest way.
Let me add that I use my FreeNAS only as a storageserver and my pools are NOT encrypted. I have no jails or anything aditional configured. I do regulary scrubs and SMART test, the core stuff.
Upgradring to a new FreeNAS version using the GUI and downloading new FreeNAS versions is not possible anymore. I am not sure at all how to best go on downloading newer images on my windowsmachine and somehow transfer it so that FreeNAS can use it to upgrade, after all its serveral versions.
What I wonder is if it is possible to just download latest TrueNAS, install it on another USB stick, remove the current sticks with FreeNAS and plug in new one with TrueNAS and finally just import my 2 pools.
For me this seems to be the easiest way, but not sure if something can go wrong here for some reason when am so many versions after ?
My server has 2 pools raidz3 and I dont have any external backups of all my data. That would require another server as I do have a lot of data.
You will find all the early Freenas Manual Update files here :
https://download-core.sys.truenas.net/
I seem to recall that the recommended stages were to got to the latest 11.X then to the latest 12.X then finish at the last Core 13.0-U6.2. Don’t go to 13.3.
Make sure you have enough space in the Boot-pool so you can revert if needs be. DO NOT upgrade the ZFS Features so you can revert.
Oh, are your pools encrytped ?
Hey @arameen
We don’t recommend USB sticks any longer for endurance/durability reasons. Is there an available SATA port or M.2 slot for an NVMe boot device?
But aside from that, yes, you can import your two pools to a new installation. Depending on the complexity of your setup, you may want to back up your configuration and attempt to import it on the your new TrueNAS install.
There’s some caveats - encryption is one. If you’re using it, you’ll need to back up your keys (I’d suggest multiple copies) and use them to import/restore. Legacy encryption will also prevent you from choosing SCALE.
The second would be things like having shared your root dataset (eg: /mnt/poolname instead of /mnt/poolname/sharedfiles) which is discouraged now and will probably, at the least, pop up a warning dialog.
And if you’re connecting to your shares with the username root you can expect that to not work either, for security/compatibility reasons.
Things have changed since FreeNAS, the USB stick skip is a suprise I was not prepared for as I had lots of extra USB sticks for the OS. It worked fine saving ports on the motherboard. Are USB sticks a completly No No ?
I udnerstand I should do some reading on recommendations for new installs and hardware. If you have links I appreciate if you post them to me. Still very new here 
I did a fast check and luckily I have one SATA port not occupied, all are taken due to man disks in my chassi.
However not sure about the NVME, what it even means 
Did not find anything about NVME in the manual of my motherboard, SuperMicro X10SL7-F
The pools are not encrypted, update the post about it. Did have encryption with FreeNAS many years ago but skipped it after some issues and reading to many posts about potential risks.
Installing TrueNAS and just importing the pools would be great if it works, I just don’t wanna try it unless there is on risk with it why am asking about it first. And if importing the settings do not work, am totally fine with that. I can add scrubs, SMART tests and share over SAMBA again. Its not a big thing compared to upgrading lots of FreeNAS versions to come to TrueNAS.
I am not connecting to shares with root.
Not sure about the shared rood dataset. I do see the system dataset pool residing on one of my 2 pools when I look in the GUI.
Back to the importing, are there any risk with tryign to import the pools to a new installation of TrueNAS when just removing the sticks with FreNAS ?
Running zpool get versions on both pools gives me "Value - " and what I found about it is that the pools are using feature flags (pool version “5000”). Whatever that would mean for just connecting those to clean new TrueNAS installations 
Thanks, I did find all that before.
I just wanna skip some steps, upgrading so many versions while it could working with a new installation. Also not sure I can manage the upgrading that way as I somehow need to get the upgrade files into the system, Am not good at FreeBSD at all.
Updated the post, no encryption
USB sticks are generally of lower endurance than a comparable SSD - they don’t tend to have the same quality control on the NAND, or features like wear-leveling and TRIM. A USB device attached via a USB-to-SATA convertor can be a viable option here if you don’t want to dedicate a SATA port to it.
Nope, that would be the best approach. You could set up a new installation, and import your pool into TrueNAS (SCALE or CORE) - from there, the crucial piece is to not upgrade the pool itself until you’re sure you’re ready to stay. ZFS is backwards compatible, in that you’ll be able to import the older version just fine - but if you upgrade and enable a feature that isn’t in your previous FreeNAS install, it won’t be able to import the pool there.
the good thing with having usb sticks with FreeNAS was that it was very cheap with dualboot. Sooner or later the SATA drive running TrueNAS will die, and with one only it will cause problems
What kind of futures in the pool are we talking about? I dont recall having a seperated poolugprades with FreeNAS. So not sure what to expect with TrueNAS, why I would like to upgrade the pool and how long to wait with that
So I have accepted the fact am not gonna use USB sticks anymore They are cheaper.
I do have to SATA ports available and I purchased Intenso TOP 128GB drives to use, I hope they are ok.
Couldnt find anything about these drives not beeing recommended for TrueNAS installations.
The plan is to use my windowsmachine to downoad the installationfiles of truenas on a USB stick, then remove the sticks with the FreeNAS installation, do a clean new install of TrueNAS using previous USB stick on the intensodrives then import the 2 poolz and report back here with how that went.
I don’t have any custom settings, do have regular scurbs and SMART tests, but those can surely be configured from scratch on the new installation.
If anything goes wrong or it does not work, am planning on inserting back the USB sticks with the FreeNAS installation.
Any words regarding what TrueNAS Scale or Core to choose ?
Am I missing out anything before doing the above ?
Almost all development is going into Scale and not the Core version of TrueNAS. You may want to wait a few days on the newest version of Scale. I think we are due for an update on the Electric Eel version with the latest bug fixes.
So everything has been paused a year until now 
Propably qualifying for the last upgraders still living on freeNAS, not even latest freeNAS 
I bought parts for a new pc were during black friday and will put together everything coming days. Before building the new PC I am gonna upgrade/newinstall the server. Want the server ready before the ew PC.
So gonna start downloading, removing USB sticks with freeNAS, connecting SATA drive, install, import the 2 pools as they are in FreeNAS (hopefully without problems) then configure an account so I can access the server soonest, before additional configuring and eventuall tweaking.
its been a year since my post why I wanna ask again:
Are there still 2 versions to choose between? Truenas core and Truenas scale?
And Truenas scale is what I should download (recommended earlier here) ?
When googling download truenas I am pointed to a community edition of TrueNAS. Are names changed now? are there 3 versions in that case what should I choose now ?
Google AI search says
”For a new setup, install TrueNAS SCALE 24.10 (ElectricEel) for Linux-based features like robust Docker/Kubernetes apps and VMs, as it’s stable and well-supported; choose TrueNAS CORE 13.3 only if you prefer FreeBSD for basic file serving and avoiding apps/VMs, knowing it’s in maintenance mode, notes Aiffro and wiki.familybrown.org.”
The only thing I am gonna use the server for is as a local filesharing storage with filehealing. Not gonna add any apps, never did before as its only access with SAMBA and protecting against silent data corruption.
Definitly no docker or images on the server.
Anyone ?
The question is well hidden in a lot of text.
It was Core vs Scale or BSD vs Linux.
Now core is still downloadable, but will only get security updates, all development goes into the Community Edition formerly known as Scale.
(Or rather into its Enterprise cousin)
It’s nice to see Google AI use me as a source. But this is simply incorrect:
24.10 doesn’t use Kubernetes any more.
But the short answer is that CORE is just barely on life support, so if you’re going to use TrueNAS, use SCALE (25.04; iX are lying about 25.10 being stable). If you have a strong technical or philosophical preference for FreeBSD over Linux, you need to look at a different NAS OS than TrueNAS.
hmm, ok. Thanks for the update.
Google AI used you as a source but manipulated what you said 
No, I dont have any preference at all.
I am running FreeNAS and its built on FreeBSD. But that doesnt matter as the only thing I am gonna use TrueNAS for is the same thing I used FreeNAS for, storage and datahealing. Also I have no skills in any of those OS. I connect with windowsmachines to my safe storagearea
At most I use the GUI to schedule tests, smart and scrubs. This time with TrueNAS maybe I am gonna do a bit more.
I am building a new windowsmachine now and running memtest at this moment, as soon as windows is installed on it and stresstests are done I will download TrueNAS scale 25.04
It is a bit worrying when versions are release and stated officially working fine but having issues. My FreeNAS version is far from latest version as I have been carefull with upgrading due to issues like this, that does show up after some time. Also as I dont use many new functions I am allways lagging some versions behind. I trust you however that 25.04 is the version to go and will downloading it coming days and start the installation. Will update this thread also, if there is still someone out there using FreeNAS then they hopefully find it usefull, as long as I dont encounter issues
The notion that one must always be on the latest and greatest version of software is a Windows-oriented mindset. In the world of servers, stability is usually the top priority and there is little interest in changing things when the system is working as it should.
“If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”
Personally, I’m on version 25.04.2.6. My system is running well and the newer releases do not address any concerns that matter to me. I have been a FreeNAS/TrueNAS user for a very long time and my normal approach to updates is to wait for the “.2” version of a release unless there is a compelling reason to update sooner.
For what it’s worth, I like the GUI in SCALE better than CORE and find it easier to do the basic things I need to do.
System:
TrueNAS 25.04.2.6 | Supermicro X9SCM-F | Xeon E3-1240V232GB ECC RAM | PNY 120GB SSD for boot
3 WD Red 4TB + 1 HGST Deskstar NAS 4TB in RaidZ2
Toshiba 128GB M.2 SSD
So after almost 2 weeks of manual back to external drives, I had both pools backed up on HDDs. Felt ready to install TrueNAS.
I removed the freeNAS OS USB sticks, mirrored OS, and inserted a TrueNAS USB stick with installationfiles after adding a SSD disk. Installed Truenas Scale 25.04 on the SSD disk and booted. Everything went fine including importing both pools. I was happy and felt, well now I can say goodbye to FreeNAS and be one of the last to move from FreeNAS to TrueNAS. Something I should have done years ago 
Ofcourse, it is never so easy 
and as soon as I started creating the sambashares to access my data from windows, the problems showed up. I can read both pools but can not write to them.
As I have been using gemini a lot lately I explained the situation and started asking it what to do. After one hour of running commands on TrueNAS as admin, in terminal and everything it started feeling like it wont work, suggested if we could fix this from FreeNAS if I reboot into it and make changes needed so permissions work. As I understand the problem is the difference in permissionhandling between FreeBSD (FreeNAS) and Linux (TrueNAS). Same time I started chatting to ChatGPT asking them same, maybe it could fix it.
Same story, running lots of commands withouget getting anywhere. I could not get the TrueNAS pemissions tab active, blue, so I can edit it. All ACL options were also greyed out.
Booted into FreeNAS and asked both what to do, did lots of running of commands in shell, with putty, with root without success. this time i started talking to copilot hoping as they are better with coding it could help. It promissed me to fix it all from inside TrueNAS TrueNAS, no need to create new datasets and move data to it to fix this (somethin ChatGPT suggested and is impossible to do as there is no space).
Also this didnt work, Copilot couldnt help me in TrueNAS or when booted in FreeNAS 
Yesh, I do have backup of the both pools, I could destroy everything, create new pools, dataset and move the data into it. But that is a very bad option.
1 Its gonna take a lot of time
2 data may already be corrupted on those disk, it is just regular copy files without checksum or healing ability on those cold disk. Besides the disk could die also. My pools are raidz3 pools becasue I am very carefull with my data and dont like to loose anything specially get any file corrupted..
3 the whole thing with FreeNAS and TrueNAS for me is that i want the data to be 100% safe. This backup was an emergency backup and last option if nothing works or data got destroyed somehow by me doing something I Should not have done when doing new stuff during the move to TrueNAS. Really not an option here.
I am pretty sure there are people here who can help with this, much better than those repetitive sloppy AI asking me to do same thing again after 15 minutes of doing stuff as they forgot we already tried this and that.
My current stations now is:
I am running FreeNAS again, I can access my pools using samba shares and everything is working with FreeNAS and the permissions between them.
TrueNAS is also installed on a disk and ready to boot from as soon as I know how to fix the permissions.
My guess is if I do several updates using freeNAS this may work, but there should be a way to skip multiple freeNAS updates before going into TrueNAS.
Worth mentioning is that my shares are on the root of each pool, the reason is that I did set up the paths like that in FreeNAS and lots of apps in windows are depending on that exact path as each poolroot is the root of a networkdisk in windows where applications expect data to be on specific paths, sometime on the roof ot the networkdisk and sometimes on folders on the rooto fhe networkdisks.
Current FreeNAS version is FreeNAS-11.0-U4 (54848d13b)
looking for human support this time 
Can add that I dont use jails, plex or anything else. Only filestorage, sambashares and scrubs + tests
You will need to read and follow the documentation for the version of TrueNAS you installed on how to set up the SMB shares. You will need to delete and remap your drive links on Windows to the new share location. Root datasets are not allowed for SMB sharing. You need a proper user set up to own the smb share also. No Root nor truenas_admin.
Read through the documents and the smb sharing section. You will have to set up a new child dataset and set up SMB. After you verify it is working, you will have to work on copying data from your root dataset and into the new share. After that is correcting all the permissions
Change if version doesn’t match
Ofcourse its new sambashares in TrueNAS with new users.
I read the guide but can not find anything about the permissionsissues. Again, am coming from a very old FreeNAS version and the problem was not reading the data with rootaccess but to modify it. The worse thing that could happen now is that I do all this (move data to new datasets) and it turns out that the permissions can not be fixed, I can only read the data as now but not modiy it. For the moment everything works fine in FreeNAS.
Also there is limited space on the pools, so moving the data to new datasets needs to be done in batches to be sure there is space and also have to be somehow with CRCchecks.
But the main thing is knowing the permissions wont be a problem doing it this way.
If I go back to TrueNAS, import the pools, create a childdataset and use rsync in TrueNAS to move the data from the rootdataset created in freenas to the new childdataset in TrueNAS all same pool still?
rsync -rlptDvh --checksum --remove-source-files --progress “/mnt/POOL/FreenasRoot/” “/mnt/POOL/truenasChild/”
Should this work considering needed space, permissions and the removal of the sourcefiles that are in the rootdataset (writepermissions didnt work last time I imported the pool) ?
The problem am trying to fix is getting writepermissions to my data in TrueNAS.
Or could there be other ways to fix this ?