Intro
So since I upgraded my workstation it was time to also update my old Synology DS214se that has lasted me with the same 2x1TB WD NAS drives since May of 2015. Sadly it is only 2 bay NAS and not worth adding in the max storage of 12TB as it’s an older NAS with only 512MB of RAM and has a gigabyte network card. Regardless it’s been an incredible NAS for ever and has covered me for almost 10 years!
The Goal
So to start off my goal is to have a large repository for all my original images something I have not done yet with my old Synology, I was only keeping completed images on what I export from Affinity Photo with my custom signature. So in all the replacing of computers moving data from one USB to another I some how lost all the original data to the follow image I took back in September of 2022.
Since I have been going back and reimaging old targets and adding to the data it would have been sweet to have an extra hour of data of NGC7000 which I recently have been reimaging once again and finally completed my first 10h 32′ integration time image ever. I am very pleased with the outcome as I did SHO and also LRGB for the stars. I also only used PixInisght and did not over saturate the image like I did on the first run
https://www.astrobin.com/wssnwx
Anywho back to the NAS, so since I have been holding onto a late birthday gift card from Amazon I ended up pulling the trigger on the new TERRAMASTER F6-424 so I can have mounds of storage for the rest of my life, at least that is my hope! You maybe asking me why not another Synology? Well that is a great question, the reason is they are just expensive IMHO. Sure it’s a Synology and they do make a super easy out of the box NAS with easy to use software but at the price they are asking for a 5 bay it just didn’t seem like the juice was worth the squeeze.
At the time of writing this, the 5-Bay Synology DiskStation DS5122+ is $699.99 (pre tax) on Amazon, the TERRAMASTER just released the new 6-Bay F6-424 and is on sale for $599.99 (pre tax). For $100 less it offers more capacity and they are using the Intel N95 so I can also use Plex hardware decoding if I so choose. For some reason Synology is moving to AMD chips and those chips do not have integrated video to decoded videos with Plex. Now I didn’t buy this NAS specifically for Plex as I have a very small library of personal videos of our Wedding, photos of family etc. and all of our main video library is on Apple TV, Amazon, or Vudu but I did like the fact I could use Plex as I bought a lifetime license 10 years ago so it would be nice to take advantage of it with my Apple TV to rewatch our wedding video or look at old photos for fun, and Plex has added a bunch of free content as well so that is a plus.
Why TrueNAS Scale?
I originally tried to use the new TOS 6.0 (TERRAMASTER Operating System) but in copying all the data from the Synology to the new TERRAMASTER shares it just stopped working and I could not connect to the shares for some reason. So long before I pulled the trigger and doing all my research on TERRAMASTER I heard a lot of complaints about TOS so before buying it I saw you can reload it with multiple options listed below
TrueNAS – https://www.truenas.com
OpenMediaVault – https://www.openmediavault.org/
Synology OS – https://forum.terra-master.com/en/viewtopic.php?t=1546
Now I did think about using Synology but I am not sure if updates will work in the future and didn’t buy the F6-424 to run that. I really wanted to try TOS 6.0 and if it failed me which I was some what expecting. However the main point of buying the TERRAMASTER was having solid hardware and could run TrueNAS. Also TrueNAS is also used by none other than NASA, so I figure am in good company lol haha! I roughly followed this video but what I did was install the OS to thumb drive as I plan to use all 6 drives I have installed along with installing 2x500GB NVMe for Disk Cache. While USB is not recommend I like to pave my own path….which is not always good. Read on and you will see I ditched the disk cache and installed the OS on the NVMe drives.
Configuration
After getting everything setup and working I am very pleased with the setup. I was able to use RAIDZ3 which allows me to fail not one drive, not two drives but a total of three drives with out loosing data! Since the drives I installed are older and have been used for 5 years from another NAS I figured I wanted the best option possible as I am not sure what the shelf life will be with these WD RED Drives. Also I am going from 1TB to 20.33TB of usable storage with the new “used” 6x8TB drives I installed. To me I can’t ask for much more. I am know I could drop to RAIDZ2 but I really wanted to be overly cautious and was willing to loose some space to make sure I could handle multiple failures. Also another thing I noticed is copying data is WAAAAAAAAAAAAY faster then TOS was, I mean like light speed different! And I don’t even have my SSD Cache setup yet!
Upgrade Time
After getting everything configured I spent some extra money and popped for 2x256GB WD Black SSD drives and installed them into the case https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09QVP977F. I also upgraded the RAM to 16GB, on the TERRAMASTER website it shows the max RAM is 32GB but if you check Intel’s site for the N95 it only supports 16GB so I didn’t want to over spend on some RAM, I didn’t buy TERRAMASTER’s RAM as it’s to expensive I just popped for the following stick from Amazon and it’s been perfect https://www.amazon.com/dp/B09S2MN8JH.
The last thing I popped for was a new switch. I have been using the 4 ports and Wi-Fi from Xfinity router I have for ever so I decided since the XIDAX has a 10Gpbs port and the NAS has 2×2.5Gpbs ports I would pop for a better network so I can copy data faster from the PC to the NAS. I dropped for the following switch which has a Web Interface and also has 2x10Gpbs ports and 4×2.5Gpbs ports https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0D3V2Y8PM. I was able to log into the web interface of the switch and setup two bonded LACP ports for ports 1&2 and did the same on the TrueNAS software for the TERRAMASTER. Copying files screams as I am getting about 271-300MB/S+ which is not bad at all.
Speaking of upgrade I did an upgrade on the unit and messed it up due to the USB thumb drive which is not recommend so dumped the cache partition and reinstalled the OS to run between the two drives for backup measures and I reimported in the main pool and was good to go!
Final Verdict
Sure I have a little more money in the setup than I originally wanted to spend but I will say I am very pleased with this setup and the ability to max out more storage in the future if I am willing to replace the drives! I also have EaseUS Todo Backup setup to backup my new workstation so I can easily restore the os or apps as need be. Again this is not a super cheap NAS but also not the most expensive NAS out there. I will say TERRAMASTER builds some solid hardware but still a little short in the software department but with such great open source options out there with a little Googling and reading you can easy setup a high end NAS with their hardware!