TrueNAS

Having recently retired, and carted my computer home, I decided to use it to set up a NAS, run Plex, and put tons of media on it.

It uses the hardware described here (which I had taken in to work after building a more advanced system for home use). I've got a couple of 12TB Ironwolf drives in it, with more on order after testing with them and seeing how it works.

I installed the TrueNAS CORE 12.0-RELEASE software after an adventure figuring out how to make the motherboard happy with the install. The combination that eventually worked was turning off everything except UEFI booting and disabling Windows security. No idea why it wouldn't boot in legacy BIOS mode, but I don't care now.

At first everything seems confusing, but it gradually starts making sense. I made a gmail account for it to use to send me alert mails and I set up remote logging on my main system so the log files all wind up in one place instead of needing to check both systems.

I installed the plex media server plugin and eventually figured out the naming conventions it demands. Added a couple of Doctor Who episodes. Then installed the Plex client on all my smart TV devices and verified they could all play the videos and pick up on a new device where it left off on the old one.

I setup a NFS mount so I could copy files into the Plex media directory.

Overall, seems to be a fairly nice setup, should also be pretty reliable with the new disks installed and a raid setup enabled. Might even be enough space left after stashing all my video files to use it for backup as well.

Next thing to do is build a small cart for the system to sit on since there isn't enough space to fit it on my existing computer cart (and I'll want it near enough to the router to be hard wired - I've just been testing with a old router acting as a wifi relay).

OK, cart made:

With a dedicated mount for a UPS at the back of the cart.

I also got my additional disks installed and let TrueNAS pick the raid configuration it thought I should use. That gives me about 31 terabytes of free space with five 12 TB disks.

One weird thing that was going on: When I'd install a new disk, an old one would disappear in the BIOS SATA screen. If I switch SATA mode to RAID, the missing disk would come back, then I could switch back to AHCI and the previously missing disk would still be there. I have no idea what on earth the BIOS is doing (but AMI is widely hated by everyone it seems). The important part was that I eventually got all the disks to work.

I took out the nvidia card since on board graphics is plenty good enough for text mode. I also took out the DVD drive since there was no place to plug it in after adding all the disks.

I can hear a bit of a hum from it if I'm close enough, but it is pretty quiet.