Mounting a drive (macos compatible) under TrueNas

[Dave Hob]

Hi all

I have a dataset on Truenas of about 1+ TB that is not organized.

I bought a faster NVME drive that is 2TB, and for efficiency I was hoping to be able to format this drive in a Macos compatible partition type and mount it in the Truenas box to move all storage on it, so I can organize it much easier when I install the NVME in the Macos machine.

It's difficult to organize that storage stuff on the Nas box, or to move everything on a 1GB lan back and forth.

Please advise if what I want to do is possible and how to do it if I may ask.

I noticed that mounting drives on Truenas it's a little bit more difficult than Linux mounting.

In the Truenas box I can use MC for example or the command line to copy all (maybe under tmux?)

Thank you

 

[edisondotme]

You cannot mount APFS drive on a TrueNAS box. Nor would this make sense. What makes it difficult to "organize that storage stuff" on your NAS? Once the network share is mounted it basically functions as local storage anyway. Also, if it is only 1TB of data you might as well just copy it all locally and be done with it. Such a transfer would only take 2-3 hours on your gigabit LAN.

 

[Chris Moore]

It's difficult to organize that storage stuff on the Nas box, or to move everything on a 1GB lan back and forth.

Simple, upgrade to 10Gb LAN.

so I can organize it much easier when I install the NVME in the Macos machine.

Just install that 2TB drive in the Mac, copy all the data locally and organize away. Then you can turn the NAS off since you don't appear to need network storage.

I noticed that mounting drives on Truenas it's a little bit more difficult than Linux mounting.

Because it isn't Linux and it isn't intended to work that way. You are supposed to create a ZFS storage pool, using multiple disks, for redundancy and capacity, and those storage array disks are intended to stay in the NAS, except on special circumstances. Storage on single disks is not advisable.

In the Truenas box I can use MC for example or the command line to copy all (maybe under tmux?)

Yes, Midnight Commander is already installed, just establish an SSH session. You can find a video demo of it on YouTube, but you would need to search for FreeNAS in conjunction with Midnight Commander.

 

[Dave Hob]

Thank you both for taking the time to reply to my inquiry.

The 10GB Lan it's a little bit more work since they are about 150ft apart (and diff buildings) and the Hackintosh is just wireless at this point. But I plan to do some wiring in the next month or two to upgrade to 10GB Lan.

If I do the transfer over the LAN, what is the most reliable way to copy. I hope that my question doesn't sound dumb, I expect this to take a few hours, so don't want the basic copy in macos to stop at some point for any reason.

Also side question, I have 2 Truenas box (main is T410 PowerEDge and backup one is R730xd, where I run more tests and VM to play with). Question: what is the best way to test in Macos the write / read speed to the smb share

2nd side question, if the share is mostly accessed from Macos and maybe just 10% from Windows install, should I use smb or the afp share?

Wish there was a TrueNas discord channel to ask some potentially stupid questions like this, that might have been answer 100 times already.

Thank you

 

[Dave Hob]

I have installed this Aja System Test app to do a write / read test

Looks like I'm getting around 100MB/s (both read and write) when I connect a cable to router (not proper cable run, hazardous with the small kids).

My nas setup has 6 HDDS, WD reds, 3TB, in raidz2.

Question: once I upgrade to 10GB LAN, what improvement could I see on this test? A guestimate, I know there's a lot of variables in a real case scenario.

Thank you