I’ve been using TrueNAS for a couple years now. I have a dedicated PC with TrueNAS Core installed directly on the system. It’s NOT running through any VM. The idea is this gives TrueNAS direct access to any and all resources the computer has without any kind of mediator slowing it down or interfering. The system has a Ryzen 2700X CPU, 64GB ram (maxed out) boot SSD and is linked to a 120TB drive box via an enterprise 10gb fiber connection.
Until recently, my network was a solid 1gb network with all switches and routers able to deal with 1gb. All the NIC cards are at least 1gb with the best drivers I can find. Performance tests indicate the network is a reliable 1gb network…
I have an SMB Share that I use to back up my computer systems on. My main system is a custom-built monster with 4 disk drives, 1 m.2 SSD 1TB (Boot), 1 2.5" SSD 4TB (Gaming) and a 6TB Western Digital high speed hard drive and a 10TB. The hard drives are used for long term storage, not daily use.
My question comes with the obvious - backups and copying the 2 16TB hard drive data over to a dedicated share on the NAS. I’ve tried this several times, but this takes huge amounts of time, like WEEKS to copy just the 6TB hard drive!
Backing up the 1TB boot drive to the SMB Share takes about 2.5 days. Extrapolating that out, my entire system is roughly 21tb. Backing up the entire system would likely take around 53 DAYS! That’s a lot of days where if one thing is done wrong, or the system hangs up or needs to be rebooted, or Windows forces an update/reboot (despite updates being turned off), the entire process would abort and I’d have to start over.
Are these numbers realistic?
1tb Boot drive - 2.5 days
4tb Gaming drive - 10 days
6tb Storage Hard Drive 1 - 15 days
10tb Storage Hard Drive 2 - 25 days
I’m currently in the process of upgrading my entire network to 10gb. All the NIC cards are upgraded, as are the 2 switches. The only piece I’m waiting on is the 10gb router. Internet comes via a 2.5 gb cablemodem, which connects to a wireless router, which connects to 2 switches, one which the devices in my office/workshop are connected to, andd the other switch at the other end of the house where my server rack is. All of these are using certified and verified Cat 8 cables. again, at present, the weak link is my wireless router only supports 1gb.
So, the connectivity path is Windows 10 (10gb NIC) - 10gb switch - 1gb router -10gb switch - Truenas dedicated 10gb fiber to storage array) (10gb NIC)
Are these times in days, expectations realistic?
I’m starting to think the best way to deal with this is to get 2 10tb hard drives and make hard drive to hard drive copies of the entire system, then seal these drives away in a safe… Harddrive to harddrive copying should take less than 2 days for the entire computer…