Can someone help me with trueNAS?

[brittle viper]

I want to build a storage system that I can access both locally and over a network (the network is less important, to be honest, but it would be a great feature). I have a very good secondary PC that I can take the GPU out of, etc. I have been looking into using trueNAS, but I just wanted to talk to someone about it and the different options and possibilities I have. For example, I could sell this PC and buy a Synology system.

So far I have watched videos explaining stuff but I find myself not understanding half of it, I'm looking for a large and fast storage solution so I can store, edit, and access large media files for business reasons so it also needs to be secure.

Would I be better off selling it and buying a Synology enclosure?

Specs of old PC:
i5 10400f
32gb DDR4 3200hz
GTX 1660S (Will remove obviously)

Some questions I have:
Does trueNAS appear as a regular drive partition on a PC?
Can I use trueNAS as a regular RAID and connect it VIA a cable to another PC for a fast connection?
Can I use RAID 5 with trueNAS?
Can I easily add new drives/replace drives using trueNAS?
Can trueNAS work between PC and MAC?
Is trueNAS fast?

[sonic forum]

im a little confused here, your first question seems like your trying to run truenas and another operating system at the same time. is that what your trying to do? youl need a vm then but that will complicate things and will slow things down

[brittle viper]

I have a PC but yeah I can wipe it to put trueNAS on

I have a main PC with windows and a second one I dont use

[sonic forum]

you would want truenas running on the ssd directly, no vm

[brittle viper]

Yessir, my main question is if it is worth running trueNAS or getting a synology system instead, and finding the pros and cons of each

I need something with alot of storage and needs to be fast, thats my main objective

[sonic forum]

both can be fast or slow, what really decides the speed is:

• the hardware you run
• raid config
• network speed
• software config

[brittle viper]

Would the network speed only matter if using the system externally

for trueNAS

[brittle viper]

What hardware matters, and what sort of software config

[sonic forum]

kind of, lets say your router is rated for up to 1 gig and you internet plan is 100 mb.
internally you could runs speeds of up to a gig but your speeds externally will be limited to 100mb

[brittle viper]

okay unedrstandable thankyou. Can I make partitions in trueNAS, and use one for local and one for external for example. Or is it jsut one large partition and I have to just make folders etc

[sonic forum]

well you would want sata ssd/nvme and alot of ram 32gb is good. your if its just for file transfers and pics/vids the i5 is already overkill

hdd speeds is ~100mbps, sata ssd ~500mbps, nvme ssd ~1gbps +

[sonic forum]

yeah you can create pools with zfs

[brittle viper]

And with the pools/groups the sata would greatly increase speed correct? planning on having 5x 8tb ironwolf pro

[brittle viper]

Okay so is that a little different that partitions?

[sonic forum]

so for what we were talking about an example setup could be:

two pools
local data
External data

the local one has high speed drives with raid since you could transfer them at speeds of up to a gig

the external one has hdd since your limited by your internet connection and saves you a bit of money

[brittle viper]

Would having two pools be slower though? as that means two drives would be two parity drives?

Im understanding better now though

[sonic forum]

zfs is a more modern file system version it directly manages the entire disk or multiple disks creating storage pools. partitioning lacks features that zfs has like self healing or data integrity checking

[brittle viper]

oh thats cool

[sonic forum]

depends on the workload and your raid configuration

[brittle viper]

probably raid 5 or equivilant, so one parity drive

[sonic forum]

If you have two pools, and both with its own raidz config, it might impact performance compared to a single pool with a bigger raidz config.

[brittle viper]

Thats what I was wondering. Would it make sense to just have one config 🤷‍♂️

Aka one pool

What I would use is on SSD to instal the OS on, a USB boot drive, the hard drives, PCIe network card to connect locally, and fast cables? is that all I need

[sonic forum]

for bigger drives like 8tb raid 5 can be have performance inpacts on random writes since it has to write to all drives and parity, also if the parity drive fails then all your data can be inaccessible

[brittle viper]

Is raid 6 a better option then?

Its just that with raid 6, it would be slower and less storage space

Would it make more sense to have more smaller drives?

[sonic forum]

Usable Storage = (Total Disk Space) - (2 * Size of Smallest Disk)
so you have 24tb of storage. i would either pick 5 or 6 though if data integrity is a must then do 6, if you want the space go with 5

[brittle viper]

This is a thinker

[sonic forum]

slower writes but better reads

[brittle viper]

Tbf read is what I need the most, would I be corect in thinking the read is the same as just in one drive

[sonic forum]

with raid 5 you would have 32tb storage

[sonic forum]

raid 5 would be faster than just 1 drive since they can read data in parallel

[brittle viper]

alright thankyou so much for your help man