Is my hardware enough for TrueNAS

[EdwinC]

I recently bought this motherboard CPU combo.
ASRock J5040-itx - Intel Quad-Core Pentium Processor J5040 (up to 3.2 GHz)

8 or 16 GB of Ram

I also have two - WD Red 2TB NAS Internal Hard Drive - 5400 RPM Class, SATA 6Gb/s, SMR, 256MB Cache, 3.5" - WD20EFAX. ---these drives were bought 9/2019 and used in the My Cloud EX2 Ultra.

This is to be used as a home NAS, mostly just to store files. I plan on using TrueNAS

Questions:
1) is that MB/CPU enough? Ram?
2) are these drives worth reusing?
3) if I can use them, I'm thinking about buying 4TD drives. Can I use them with the 2TB drives I already have? Or is it better to but only use 4TB drives.
4) I have an older 60GB 2.5 SSD. I'm thinking about using as a boot/OS drive. Is this OK? I have other SSD drives of larger sizes. Just trying to make use of this drive.
5) I may add two more Sata connectors through a pcie x1 card. Is this OK to use or is this not advised with TrueNAS?

 

[Samuel Tai]

Welcome aboard!

Before you dive headfirst into building a system, you may want to do some reading first.

1. ZFS Primer
2. The path to success for block storage
3. Please do not run FreeNAS in production as a Virtual Machine!
4. "Absolutely must virtualize FreeNAS!" ... a guide to not completely losing your data.
5. What's all the noise about HBA's, and why can't I use a RAID controller?
6. Some differences between RAIDZ and mirrors, and why we use mirrors for block storage
7. Path to Success for Structuring Datasets in Your Pool
8. Path to success for system upgrades

I apologize for inflicting such heavy tomes on you, but FreeNAS/TrueNAS is an enterprise-level storage solution, so there are many more knobs and dials available than on a desktop OS. It absolutely requires and rewards coherent planning before installation, and a cautious and disciplined approach to daily/weekly/monthly operations. You'll need to have a plan for recovering from oopses, and to learn best practices to minimize the risks associated with any configuration change. As an enterprise solution, it assumes you know what you're doing, so there's a lot less of a safety net than on a desktop.

As to your questions:

• Your drives aren't up to snuff. The EFAX drives are SMR, and aren't suitable for ZFS.
• 16 GB RAM is the recommended minimum.
• Larger drives are better; see reference 2 above.
• Please don't use SATA expander cards; they're more trouble than they're worth. See https://www.truenas.com/community/r...t-multipliers-and-cheap-sata-controllers.177/