How to Set Up TrueNAS SCALE: From Bare Metal to First Share

If you have a machine with spare drives and want a reliable, ZFS-backed NAS, learning how to set up TrueNAS SCALE is the right starting point. SCALE is iXsystems’ Linux-based branch of TrueNAS — it runs on a Debian foundation, handles SMB, NFS, and iSCSI shares, and adds Docker-compatible apps and optional virtualization on top of the ZFS storage engine. This guide walks through every stage: hardware, installation, pool creation, datasets, sharing, and a backup skeleton that will actually protect you.

The current general-availability release is TrueNAS 25.10 “Goldeye”. If you are on a mission-critical workload that needs maximum stability, 25.04 “Fangtooth” is still a supported option. For a new build, start with Goldeye.

Hardware: What You Actually Need

TrueNAS SCALE’s published minimums are conservative for home use. The real floor:

• CPU: Any x86_64 processor from the last decade. An N100 mini-PC works for a single-user media NAS; a Xeon E or Ryzen builds headroom for VMs and apps.
• RAM: 8 GB is the absolute minimum; 16 GB is a comfortable start. ZFS uses RAM for its ARC cache — more RAM means better read performance. If you plan to run apps or VMs alongside storage, budget 32 GB. ECC RAM is recommended: ZFS checksums data on disk, but a RAM bit-flip before the checksum is computed corrupts data silently. ECC catches that class of error.
• Boot drive: 20 GB minimum, dedicated device — a cheap USB 3.0 stick or a small M.2 SSD you are not using for data. Keep this separate from your storage pool.
• Data drives: At minimum two drives of identical size to create a mirrored pool. Four drives gets you RAIDZ2. Used enterprise SATA or SAS drives (Seagate Exos, WD Ultrastar) are the homelab-standard choice.

Avoid LSI HBA cards with an IT-mode firmware if the card shipped in IR mode — reflash to IT mode to pass drives directly to ZFS. The Broadcom 9300-8i (flashed to IT mode) is the community standard.

Installing TrueNAS SCALE

Download and write boot media. Grab the installer ISO from the official TrueNAS downloads page. On Linux, write it to USB with dd status=progress if=TrueNAS-SCALE.iso of=/dev/sdX. On Windows, Rufus works cleanly. Ventoy is useful if you manage multiple ISOs on one drive.

Boot the installer. Insert the USB, access your UEFI/BIOS (the hotkey varies by motherboard — common ones are Delete, F2, or F11), and select the USB as the boot device. Choose UEFI boot mode where your hardware supports it; legacy BIOS mode still works but is the older path.

Work through the installer.

1. Select the destination disk for TrueNAS — this erases everything on that drive.
2. Choose Administrative user (truenas_admin) and set a strong password. This is the account you will use to access the web UI.
3. Select UEFI or legacy boot as prompted.
4. When the installer confirms success, remove the USB and reboot.

The system boots to a text console and displays its IP address — assigned via DHCP by default. That address is your entry point to the web UI.

Initial Web UI Configuration

Open a browser on any machine on the same network and navigate to the IP shown on the console. Log in with truenas_admin and the password you set.

The setup wizard appears on first login. Work through it:

• Hostname and DNS: Set a meaningful hostname (e.g., nas01) and point DNS at your router or a local resolver.
• Time zone: Set correctly — ZFS scrub schedules, snapshot schedules, and logs all depend on this.
• Network interface: If you want a static IP (recommended for a NAS), configure it under Network > Interfaces before your DHCP lease can move on you.

Setting Up Storage: Pools and Datasets

This is where ZFS-specific decisions matter.

Create your first pool. Go to Storage, click Create Pool, and the Pool Creation Wizard opens. Name the pool using lowercase letters, numbers, hyphens, and underscores — no uppercase, no spaces. You cannot rename a pool after creation, so pick something you can live with (tank, pool0, or the hostname-prefixed nas01-data are all fine).

Choose your layout:

• Mirror: Two drives, each a full copy of the other. Survives one drive failure. Storage capacity = one drive’s size.
• RAIDZ1: Three or more drives, one parity disk. Survives one failure. Cheap on drives; one parity disk is the minimum safety net.
• RAIDZ2: Four or more drives, two parity disks. Survives two simultaneous failures. The standard recommendation for drives storing data you care about.
• Stripe: No redundancy. Fast, maximum capacity, no protection. Do not use this for anything you want to keep.

After the pool is created, build your dataset tree before you create any shares. A dataset is a ZFS filesystem with its own permissions, quota, and compression settings. A flat pool with all data thrown into the root dataset is the mistake that makes reorganization painful later.

A minimal structure for a home NAS:

tank/
  media/         # Plex/Jellyfin, no compression needed for already-compressed video
  documents/     # Enable LZ4 compression; meaningful savings on office files
  backups/       # Incremental backup target
  apps/          # TrueNAS app data; separate dataset so snapshots are independent

When creating each dataset, use the SMB preset if the share will serve Windows clients, or Generic for NFS-primary datasets. The preset configures ACL type and share-protocol-appropriate defaults.

Creating Your First SMB Share

SMB (Server Message Block) is the Windows-native file-sharing protocol — the right choice for most home networks with a mix of Windows, macOS, and Linux clients.

1. Go to System Settings > Services and enable the SMB service. Toggle on Start Automatically so it survives reboots.
2. Navigate to Shares > Windows Shares (SMB) and click Add.
3. Set the Path to the dataset you created (e.g., /mnt/tank/documents).
4. Give the share a name — this is what clients see when they browse the network.
5. Save and apply.

On Windows, open File Explorer and type \\<your-NAS-IP> in the address bar. The share appears immediately. For Linux clients, mount with mount -t cifs //nas-ip/documents /mnt/nas -o username=truenas_admin.

For NFS shares (better for Linux VMs and Proxmox storage), the process is similar under Shares > Unix Shares (NFS).

Backups: The Part You Will Skip (Don’t)

ZFS RAID is not a backup — it protects against drive failure, not against accidental deletion, ransomware, or misconfiguration. Set up two things before you put data on your NAS:

Periodic snapshots. Under Data Protection > Periodic Snapshot Tasks, create a task for each dataset with daily snapshots retained for 30 days, and weekly snapshots retained for 12 weeks. Snapshots are space-efficient (only changed blocks cost space) and let you roll back individual files without a full restore.

Replication. Replicate snapshots to a second location — a second pool on the same machine at minimum, a remote TrueNAS instance or Backblaze B2 via a replication task for real off-site protection. The replication task wizard in Data Protection > Replication Tasks handles ZFS send/receive automatically.

Scrub schedule. Under Data Protection > Scrub Tasks, verify a monthly scrub is configured on each pool. A scrub reads every block and validates checksums — it catches silent corruption before it spreads.

When you are exposing shares or the web UI to anything outside your LAN, review the security posture. For network hardening context, TechSentinel ↗ covers emerging NAS-targeted threats and relevant CVEs.

Sources

• TrueNAS SCALE Installation Instructions ↗ — Official installer walkthrough covering hardware minimums, boot media creation, and first-boot authentication setup.

• Setting Up Storage in TrueNAS SCALE ↗ — Official documentation on Pool Creation Wizard, RAIDZ/Mirror/dRAID layout options, dataset types, and ZFS naming conventions.

• Windows Shares (SMB) — TrueNAS Documentation Hub ↗ — Complete reference for creating and managing SMB shares, enabling the service, and configuring access controls.

• TrueNAS Plans for 2026 ↗ — iXsystems roadmap post confirming 25.10 “Goldeye” as the current GA release and 25.04 “Fangtooth” as the stability-focused alternative.