Setting up a potential NAS for a first timer

[Empty__]

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Nothing really, just storing stuff and launching games for now (if that's even possible)

 

I didn't know where else to put this other than planning so apologies. 

 

I'm planning on using a pc my friend is giving me as my first NAS or just a storage machine that I can use from my main gaming pc but I don't really know where to start besides some googling. The focus is to be able to store files on it and have my games launch from it (if that's even possible). This is basically going to be baby's first NAS I guess. I plan to have 8 tbs of storage to start (two 4tb seagate drives as of right now). The pc he's giving me is more than capable and has a 1060 3gb that I suppose I wont need. But as of right now, I don't know how I would set it up or how communication with it would work. I've looked up some guides and particularly LTT's own "Your Old PC is Your New Server" video and while I think I can follow that video I've been hearing a lot about TrueNAS as well as other operating systems/programs for setting up a NAS. I was wondering what all the benefits and drawbacks of these different systems are so any insight is greatly appreciated.

[BeatsByWillSmith]

10 minutes ago, Empty__ said:

Country: United States

Games, programs or workloads that it will be used for: Nothing really, just storing stuff and launching games for now (if that's even possible)

 

I didn't know where else to put this other than planning so apologies. 

 

I'm planning on using a pc my friend is giving me as my first NAS or just a storage machine that I can use from my main gaming pc but I don't really know where to start besides some googling. The focus is to be able to store files on it and have my games launch from it (if that's even possible). This is basically going to be baby's first NAS I guess. I plan to have 8 tbs of storage to start (two 4tb seagate drives as of right now). The pc he's giving me is more than capable and has a 1060 3gb that I suppose I wont need. But as of right now, I don't know how I would set it up or how communication with it would work. I've looked up some guides and particularly LTT's own "Your Old PC is Your New Server" video and while I think I can follow that video I've been hearing a lot about TrueNAS as well as other operating systems/programs for setting up a NAS. I was wondering what all the benefits and drawbacks of these different systems are so any insight is greatly appreciated.

Right now I am doing the same thing, I have one 8tb barracuda compute drive. If I recall they are not rated for 24/7 use, so im kinda iffy on using it over buying a NAS drive. However I find linux to be useful. I am going to use a web ui like Homer box and it already has docker, so portainer will be useful. Im going to turn it into a server for my house to run all the things I have been needing to run. Like pihole. 

[RONOTHAN##]

8 minutes ago, Empty__ said:

launching games for now (if that's even possible)

That is possible. 

 

For background, on Windows there's two types of network drives that you can use: SMB and iSCSI. SMB is the default type of network share since it's got advantages for multiple users, plus it's a lot easier to setup. The problem with it is that the random read performance with it is pretty terrible, so a lot of games will perform kinda bad with it, and there's some games that just won't even launch from an SMB share. 

 

iSCSI, on the other hand, is a bit more involved to setup, but Windows treats it as if there was a HDD plugged directly into the computer. The downsides of it are that, like an HDD, only one machine would be able to access it at a time, and thus it does defeat some of the purpose of having a NAS. Still, if you want to game off a system like this, it is a good option, and if you wanna set it up, there's things like deduplication so if you have multiple users on there with the same game installed on different iSCSI drives, it'll only effectively take up the amount of space as one game install (plus different save data). 

 

A decent tutorial for how to set it up if you want to:

 

16 minutes ago, Empty__ said:

I've been hearing a lot about TrueNAS as well as other operating systems/programs for setting up a NAS. I was wondering what all the benefits and drawbacks of these different systems are so any insight is greatly appreciated.

TrueNAS and UnRAID are a lot more focused on NAS duty, so they've got some cooler features and a bit less CPU overhead. UnRAID has an easier to use expansion system for the drives, while TrueNAS has a more reliable software RAID implementation by default (though if you're planning on running less than 8 drives, both are fine, and both are still more reliable than Windows Storage Spaces). UnRAID costs money while TrueNAS is free, UnRAID has more community plugins though TrueNAS has IMO a better interface for setting up drives and managing the NAS. UnRAID has the better Virtualization section, though TrueNAS (specifically the TrueNAS scale variant) is getting a lot better. 

 

If you're planning on running 2 4TB drives and you want some redundancy, UnRAID is probably the better option since it will be a lot easier to expand your drives in the future, plus any feature you can run on TrueNAS you can find to run on UnRAID, even if it will be a bit more difficult. Either doing it the Windows way or setting up UnRAID is probably your best bet. 

[Bdavis]

The main advantage of trueNAS or unRAID is data parity which means if you have a drive fail you still have your data. This is not a replacement for a proper backup though.

 

Communication is handled by networking, and if you want to load games it may be slower than just storing them on a hard drive in your gaming rig.

 

A NAS is typically used to backup other machines, serve media files, share files for access on multiple computers and over the internet. If you just want to store games put the drives in the gaming rig.

[Empty__]

17 hours ago, Bdavis said:

The main advantage of trueNAS or unRAID is data parity which means if you have a drive fail you still have your data. This is not a replacement for a proper backup though.

 

Communication is handled by networking, and if you want to load games it may be slower than just storing them on a hard drive in your gaming rig.

 

A NAS is typically used to backup other machines, serve media files, share files for access on multiple computers and over the internet. If you just want to store games put the drives in the gaming rig.

I agree that if I were to only store games on these drives it would be better to just have all 8 tb on my main gaming rig but that's not the primary focus. While I will still have some games on my machine, like the ones I play most often, the NAS that I want to make is for storing files and games that I don't need right now. My 2 tb hard drive on my machine is already nearly full with not games but mostly school stuff and I would like to offload a lot of the "unneeded" files to a NAS for easy storage. Not to mention I only have 1, 3.5" bay on my machine because when I was building it I went for looks over ease of use (I have a corsair crystal 570x, the other 3.5" bay is used by a RGB controller. I regret this decision). Plus, the main reason I want to try my hand at a personal NAS is just to tinker and have fun with this hardware. This is just a start, I hope to expand this to true NAS duty and maybe something else in the future, getting the bones up and running I think is important. 

[Bdavis]

5 hours ago, Empty__ said:

I agree that if I were to only store games on these drives it would be better to just have all 8 tb on my main gaming rig but that's not the primary focus. While I will still have some games on my machine, like the ones I play most often, the NAS that I want to make is for storing files and games that I don't need right now. My 2 tb hard drive on my machine is already nearly full with not games but mostly school stuff and I would like to offload a lot of the "unneeded" files to a NAS for easy storage. Not to mention I only have 1, 3.5" bay on my machine because when I was building it I went for looks over ease of use (I have a corsair crystal 570x, the other 3.5" bay is used by a RGB controller. I regret this decision). Plus, the main reason I want to try my hand at a personal NAS is just to tinker and have fun with this hardware. This is just a start, I hope to expand this to true NAS duty and maybe something else in the future, getting the bones up and running I think is important. 

Ok, it sounds like the NAS if more for archival storage which I can understand. In response to your main questions, NAS operating systems advantages are stability, low resources for the OS, resiliency and redundancy. They are designed to be an appliance that is always on and constantly maintaining your data with scrubs, snapshots, and automatic backups. Their limitations are that they sometimes can't do everything you want them to. They can have limited plugins and can be picky about what hardware and software they support. You can get around most of these issues with VM's, and new apps are constantly being added. My suggestion would be to try out a few different OS's and choose the one you like best. trueNAS core is tried and true, TrueNAS Scale is still new, but shows promise as it supports Docker. I've heard good things about unRAID, but personally have never tried it because it isn't free.

[Bdavis]

5 hours ago, Empty__ said:

I agree that if I were to only store games on these drives it would be better to just have all 8 tb on my main gaming rig but that's not the primary focus. While I will still have some games on my machine, like the ones I play most often, the NAS that I want to make is for storing files and games that I don't need right now. My 2 tb hard drive on my machine is already nearly full with not games but mostly school stuff and I would like to offload a lot of the "unneeded" files to a NAS for easy storage. Not to mention I only have 1, 3.5" bay on my machine because when I was building it I went for looks over ease of use (I have a corsair crystal 570x, the other 3.5" bay is used by a RGB controller. I regret this decision). Plus, the main reason I want to try my hand at a personal NAS is just to tinker and have fun with this hardware. This is just a start, I hope to expand this to true NAS duty and maybe something else in the future, getting the bones up and running I think is important. 

Ok, it sounds like the NAS if more for archival storage which I can understand. In response to your main questions, NAS operating systems advantages are stability, low resources for the OS, resiliency and redundancy. They are designed to be an appliance that is always on and constantly maintaining your data with scrubs, snapshots, and automatic backups. Their limitations are that they sometimes can't do everything you want them to. They can have limited plugins and can be picky about what hardware and software they support. You can get around most of these issues with VM's, and new apps are constantly being added. My suggestion would be to try out a few different OS's and choose the one you like best. trueNAS core is tried and true, TrueNAS Scale is still new, but shows promise as it supports Docker. I've heard good things about unRAID, but personally have never tried it because it isn't free.