All posts
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Best Budget NAS Build for Home: What Actually Works in 2026
A practical guide to the best budget NAS build for home use: Intel N100 platforms, ZFS-compatible drives, TrueNAS SCALE setup, and the backup plan
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How to Set Up TrueNAS SCALE: From Bare Metal to First Share
A practical step-by-step guide on how to set up TrueNAS SCALE — hardware, installation, pool creation with RAIDZ, datasets, SMB shares, and backups.
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TrueNAS vs Unraid for Home Media: Which NAS OS Wins in 2026?
Comparing TrueNAS SCALE and Unraid for Plex and Jellyfin home media servers — storage models, app ecosystems, hardware requirements, and which one to pick
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TrueNAS Pool Expansion: 3 Ways to Grow a ZFS Pool
Add a vdev, replace drives one by one, or use RAIDZ expansion to grow a TrueNAS pool without rebuilding. Compare the trade-offs and pick the right path.
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TrueNAS: Replace a Failed Disk in a Degraded Pool
Replace a failed disk in a degraded TrueNAS pool safely: identify the drive by serial, swap it, run the resilver, and verify ONLINE on SCALE and CORE.
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TrueNAS Zpool Import Recovery: Fix a Pool That Won't Import
Recover a TrueNAS zpool that won't import: decode UNAVAIL vs FAULTED vs DEGRADED, fix missing devices, run safe read-only and dry-run imports, know when
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TrueNAS SCALE vs Unraid vs OpenMediaVault in 2026
Three popular home NAS operating systems, three different philosophies. How TrueNAS SCALE, Unraid, and OpenMediaVault differ on filesystem, data
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iSCSI vs NFS vs SMB on TrueNAS: Which Share Type to Use
TrueNAS exposes storage three ways: SMB, NFS, and iSCSI. File sharing vs block storage, which clients each suits, the performance trade-offs, and how to
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TrueNAS Scrubs and SMART Tests: A Disk Health Routine
How ZFS scrubs and SMART self-tests work together on TrueNAS, the right schedule for a home NAS, and which SMART attributes warn you before a drive dies.
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TrueNAS Datasets vs Zvols: When to Use Which
A dataset is a filesystem; a zvol is a virtual block device. How they differ on TrueNAS, what recordsize and volblocksize mean, and which to create for
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The TrueNAS Hardware Guide: What Actually Matters for a Home NAS
ECC RAM, HBAs, drives, motherboards, and power. A practical hardware guide for building a TrueNAS server at home: what to splurge on and what is fine.
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TrueNAS SCALE vs CORE in 2026: Which to Install
TrueNAS CORE hit its final release in 2025; SCALE is the Linux-based future with native apps and VMs. Here is how to pick the right one for a home NAS in 2026.
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TrueNAS Snapshot and Replication Strategy
Snapshots protect against accidents. Replication protects against fires. Here is a practical TrueNAS snapshot schedule and replication setup for a home
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RAIDZ vs Mirrors: ZFS Pool Design for a Home NAS
RAIDZ vs mirrors for your TrueNAS pool: a clear breakdown of usable capacity, rebuild risk, and IOPS so you pick the right vdev topology the first time
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TrueNAS SCALE Apps: Getting Started the Clean Way
TrueNAS SCALE Apps run Plex, Jellyfin, Nextcloud and more directly on your NAS via Docker. Learn how the app system works, the storage layout to set up
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Setting Up SMB Shares on TrueNAS SCALE
A step-by-step guide to creating SMB shares on TrueNAS SCALE — dataset layout, user permissions, ACLs, and the gotchas that make SMB look broken when it isn't.
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ZFS Performance Tuning: ARC, Recordsize, and Compression
The three ZFS tunables that actually matter for a home NAS: ARC sizing, dataset recordsize, and compression. What each does, when to change it, and what