Moving from Synology with 2 HDD - best practice?

[Schlicki]

Hello all!

I'm new to TrueNAS and going to switch from my old synology 215.

I have a 8 and 10 TB HDD in my syno and want them to work as a simple mass storage attached via USB on an Dell thin client as long as I can get a new hardware setup.

As I cannot just switch the drives; I have to move them one for one because of the file systems and copy the data as I read the descriptions correctly.

So do I have to create a single pool for each HDD and mount it via SMB or can I mount the attached HDD without creating a pool?

 

[Arwen]

TrueNAS and ZFS are a poor choice for USB attached data drives;

Why you should avoid USB attached drives for data pool disks

This subject has been coming up quite often in the last year or 2. Perhaps because of TrueNAS SCALE has brought forth some attention to TrueNAS in general and ZFS in specific. Please note that this is about USB attached storage for ZFS data...

www.truenas.com

TrueNAS only uses ZFS for the file system. If you intend to keep your disks with existing file system & data, then it is not possible with TrueNAS.

Using single disk pools is possible, but any disk failure means loss of data. (Unless you have backups.) We here in the forums tend to be conservative because we love our data, (family photos & videos, media, etc...) So we don't suggest non-redundant configurations.

And no, you can not just mount the attached HDD. TrueNAS again only uses ZFS, and won't share out foreign file systems.


While TrueNAS and ZFS is quite good, both were written for the Enterprise Data Center market. Both can and do work on lower end computers, (I use ZFS on my miniature media server). However, TrueNAS and ZFS are not the answer to all NAS situations.

 

[Schlicki]

Hi Arwen, greetings from Rohan :)

I don't have to keep the data and file system, formatting them is not a problem. I just want to attach the two HDD and reach them from different clients in my home network. But as the thin client does not offer internal SATA slots, I have to use them external. It's not a long term solution, but shall work for some weeks.

I know the risk of non-reduntant configuration, but all important data from the two HDD is saved on private cloud services.

Don't want to make anybody angry, but shall openMediaVault be the better solution for this setting?

 

[Arwen]

We are not offended if different NAS software is a better solution for someone.

As for OpenMediaVault, I don't know, never investigated it, nor used it. But, feel free to continue to ask if anyone can give you a comparison.

 

[kiriak]

I migrated from Synology to TrueNAS a couple of years ago.
I think it is the best home solution regarding data integrity and I use it as such.
( I say home because I have no idea about alternatives for enterprises).

I use also OpenMediaVault since then as an easy way to handle a few services in Docker containers and SMB shares on a mini PC.
It is easy, needs very low resources and is quite reliable.
I think you can use for what you want to do.