Hi guys, I’m building my first PC ever! I wanted a NAS so I could access all my files on my local home network on any device, and so I could have remote access to my files / a Plex or Jellyfin server as well. I plan on setting up two drives in a RAID 1 configuration for mirroring/redundancy.
I was looking at some prebuilt NAS units, but, aside from wanting the fun project of building it myself anyway, a major drawback I saw in reviews was how crappy the proprietary OS’s for these units were. I see that TrueNas is a popular free OS option, but I wonder if I even need something that robust?
I understand TrueNas has a nice web GUI, which would be useful considering I don’t plan on having a mouse/keyboard/monitor set up with this PC. Although I’m sure there are also easy Windows remote desktop solutions for that as well.
Any recommendations would be super appreciated! All my parts are on their way from Newegg currently:
Case: Fractal Design Node 304
MoBo: ASRock Z690M-ITX/ax LGA 1700
CPU: Intel Core i5-12600K
Cooler: SAMA CPU Air Cooler 4PI120MM
PSU: EVGA 500 GE, 80 Plus Gold 500W
HDDs: x2 TOSHIBA N300 HDWG11AXZSTA 10TB 7200 RPM 256MB Cache SATA
SSD: SANDISK X400 M.2 2280 128GB SATA M.2 SSD
RAM: x2 NEMIX RAM 8GB DDR4
I have been running TrueNAs/FreeNAS for 15 years or so, it’s solid, and does its thing. There are a lot of guides out there for it, it’s a real storage solution and can interact with Linux devices easily through NFS. I would rather use that than Windows for this purpose. It also has a bunch of tools for drive SMART reporting and drive testing.