Hello

NAS noob here.

I’ve just purchased a Terramaster F4-423 on Amazon black friday sale.

Haven’t heard great things about their operating system TOS so I’ve decided to change the OS (I have not yet) to TrueNas Core (after some research). I will probably go with the ZFS file structure as I think I may be able to add more drives at a later date. I will most likely purchase two 4TB HDD’s (for redundancy. How good is ZFS at redundancy? With the HDD’s how much redundancy will I need if I want to use one as a fail-safe if the other dies?

Additionally, are there any other NAS operating systems that are good?

I will mainly be using my NAS as a file storage device and a plex server (4K). I have a 1GBPS internet connection. I’m not too worried about accessing it remotely.

Also, I have heard that to install TrueNAS you need 32GB ram. However I have 16GB ddr4 3200mhz, is this enough?

I also thought about purchasing a few NVME’s as the device has two slots. I was thinking of using one to install TrueNas (as it is not good to leave the USB in the motherboard) and the other to use as a caching drive. However after some research, I have heard this may not be necessary for my use case?

Also, will I be able to add more drives (easily) with ZFS at a later stage?

Apologies for all the questions, any help is appreciated.

  • Pvt-Snafu@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    ZFS can do self-healing if you drives are in mirror or RAIDZ1/2/3. I would put those two drives in ZFS mirror. Then you would scale it by adding another two drives in mirror.

    ZFS doen’t need much RAM. All that talk about 32GB RAM or 1GB per TB storage is nonsense. It will work with any amount of RAM. Primarily, ZFS needs more RAM if you’re using deduplication.

  • Party_9001@alien.topBEnglish
    1·
    1 year ago

    I will probably go with the ZFS file structure

    What do you mean “think”? You don’t get a choice on TrueNAS lol

    How good is ZFS at redundancy?

    The… Exact same as other RAIDs I guess?

    With the HDD’s how much redundancy will I need if I want to use one as a fail-safe if the other dies?

    Minimum of 1? Not entirely sure what you’re asking

    Also, I have heard that to install TrueNAS you need 32GB ram. However I have 16GB ddr4 3200mhz, is this enough?

    More than enough. I got it running on 2.5GB ¯⁠\⁠_⁠(⁠ツ⁠)⁠_⁠/⁠¯

    and the other to use as a caching drive.

    Caching does not work the way most people think it works on ZFS

    Also, will I be able to add more drives (easily) with ZFS at a later stage?

    If you buy in sets instead of 1 drive at a time, yes. If not, YMMV