Building A NAS Using TrueNAS - Turning My Old Computer Into A NAS 

Samir ... YOU rock mate, well done with making this easy and clear.

Wonderful video and very helpful. I took an old computer, bought some new drives at pretty low cost, and built out the hardware end. I worked my way through installing and configuring Truenas but got stuck once it was up and running. This video got me across the finish line of setting up datasets, users, permissions, and sharing. Now I have in-network home storage for family photos, videos, etc., that everyone can access. Thanks Samir!

OK, this is exactly what I want to do with an old Windows 7 PC, and this video is way helpful. Thanks!

Honestly man this tutorial was such well made and easy to follow trough .. thank you for the great content 😊👍🏼

I've built computers but never a NAS. That will soon change. I haven't yet tried using your instructions so I can't yet give you a grade on process. I can, however, comment on the video itself. It is extremely well paced and it appears to be both informative and concise. Bravo and thanks! Side note: All of the capacity of a hard drive is "usable." The disparity between capacity references is related to how kilobytes, megabytes, gigabytes and terabytes are "calculated." Windows calculates capacities based on powers of 1024, (2 to the power of 10). Hard drive and SSD manufacturers calculate base on powers of the beautifully round 1000 - because using powers of 1000 yields higher numbers for their marketing departments than would using powers of 1024.

Samir my man! Great video. looking forward to the growth and success of your channel. This is the best video I've seen on the subject. I try to avoid affiliate links but for this project I'll be sure to use yours to help support!

Thanks Samir, that was helpful. I'm almost done with my Nas build, will be using Trunas core. It's quite confusing as a newbie, brand new system to learn, but with a few (how to) videos it will probably work out eventually.

wow that was so well explained and simplified. thank you

Thanks Samir, i've got a couple of old PCs at home and was talking to my wife about doing this so they're at least doing something!

Excellent video. I have some old PC in the basement. It will be an interesting project. Thank you once again for this video!

Beautiful video i hope you can find more time for tech content wether its random or tutorials id love to watch more

Don't forget to replace the thermal paste if you've been using that computer for 7 years.

Geez that's a huge case!!! I like it!!

I love the Nas name drop.

Nice, same old case as mine. Was gonna sell it and put the drives in a wired enclosure but damn. Now I'm having second thoughts...

Very nice video. Clear and concise. I wish all tutorials were this good. Well done.

Samir, great video. Thanks. I just finished converting my venerable Gigabyte mobo to a NAS server and saw your video just now. Glad to see that I did most things right! I do wish you'd do a video on setting up VPN access to a TrueNAS server. I've got an OpenVPN Server (partially) configured on my ASUS router, and would love to know how to use that as a path for remote access to my NAS from my mobile devices, especially Android phones and tablets. But, I'm pretty clueless as to where to begin. If YOU know how to do this, it would make for a great instructional video. Hope you will consider it.

Just a solid video keep up the good work

Samir this tutorial is well done. Thanks a lot!

Nowadays, you can simply drop the iso file on a flash drive that has Ventoy installed! Much faster than making individual drives for different things!

Great video thank you 🙏🏻

Thanks a lot, TrueNas is also on my radar, but I want it to put on a new system, with cool housing, ….

This was an excellent tutorial. Just built a 60TB rig for content creation! Thanks :) Ps: do you know of a way to back up every file on my PC to my NAS automatically like every week?

very nice and very informative, and I would like to suggest is just like another video on how to access files in NAS as a server to other network wherever I am. and how setup secured access to other network.

Well done!

Excellent how to! 🎉

Awesome video. Thank you.

Thank you very much! This was the best video that I found on this topic. You really explained things well. I am waiting for my hard drives to arrive so that I can start building my NAS. Question: do you have a video explaining how to share files outside of the LAN? In other words, I would like to share files with a friend who is not part of my LAN. Can I share a link with my friend so that he can get files from me and give files to me? Thanks! Subscribed. Dane

Could you do a tutorial on how to use the NAS to set up automatic back-ups and how you can access files when you are away from home?

can you add any size hard drives later? eg when the pool fills up?

When talking about NAS, people should talk about processor requirements and ecc RAM.

Many thanks for the video. I saved me hour of wanting to throw my system out of a window......

Thank you Samir! It works well. I would like to ask you one question. In the future I would like to replace my harddrives with bigger ones. Currently I have 3HDDs with 2TB in raidz and I would like to replace them with 4TB ones. Do you have a guide for that? Or would you recommend one? Thank you in advance for reply.

excellent

Excellent tutorial Samir! Question for you - Can I set up 1 pool that uses both SMB and AFP? I need something cross-platform, and I've had loads of trouble with SMB on Mac in the past.

Best Tutorial on you tube , you should have 6 million not 6000 subscribers , well done

Great video!! I do do please need some help. I followed all your instructions and btw very awesome, but it keeps telling me incorrect username or password.... I know it's correct tho.

Hi Samir. I have just finish building my NAS from an old computer. Please, everything is working it is great. However, how to access my files on my pool, "swimming pool" from, for example, another country, please? Many thanks,

8:45 At this point I'm stuck. I don't see my hard drive. I tried to reinstall it a few times but I do not get to see the HDD. Thumbdrives show up, selecting those does not activate the "create" button. Is my 500GB drive too small?

How reliable is this method compared to an actual NAS setup? It costs more, I'd prefer to go with this method, but I have some important data that I need to put on the hard disk so I am just worried about its safety. How long can we expect this method to work?

did it step by step with no mistake. when trying to access the file form network drive setup or directly from explorer address, at the credentials prompt it always say "wrong password"... idk

All these videos are about turning old PCs into a NAS, what about using a current gaming rig?

Well done Smir, great explanation. Can I use existing external HDD's which have a USB connection (ie with a ESATA converter cable) and use them in a none RAID format

is there any specitific feature required before i buy motherboard with something hardware like PCI you suggest between super awesome guide on NAS installation on old PC

I copied this step by step but I am on an IMAC. It won't let me log into the share I created and it says only use SMB for Apple as they adopted it. What am I doing wrong?

Subscribed and liked.

Stupid question. So if both computers are connected to the router with Ethernet cables, I don't need any of those 10gb Ethernet cards? They interact with one another through the router?

Thanks for the video. I wanna know that whether we can share/access the drive to/from other networks or not. I mean I want to setup data storage in my home and want to access it from my office. Is that possible?

I see the reasons why having a NAS system are good, but I'm not keen on leaving the system up and running all the time. So would I need a monitor and keyboard plugged into the unit to login and start the program or can I just power it on and would it start up the service automatically.

I tried installing True NAS on an old laptop but True NAS requires 16GB RAM minimum. Did you install True NAS on an empty drive? Can it be installed on a drive with Windows 10 or 11? What about using an old Mac Pro 1.1 for a NAS?

Hi, I tried plugging in with my gaming laptop to try it out but it seems I dont get IP even if I plug in ethernet cable. How do I solve this?

Do I have to be on the same network to reach the nas or can I reach it from everywhere with internet ? 🤔

well made. thank you! how can I protect the NAS server from Viruses ? malware ? ransomware?

Thank you for an excellent video! Can this be setup via wifi, I don't have ethernet nearby?

Good video

Nice video. One question.... When we install True NAS do we have to specially create internet connectivity or will it automatically configure with the on board network card (if Lan cable is connected?) 🙂

is JBOD not an option for TrueNAS?

what burning tool are you using for burning USB. Your english sound like edger, etcher?

Excellent subbed can you dual share pc and mac at the same time?

its stopping on the part where its making the 16gb swap

Hi, with this process can I work on large files like photoshop, and video editing using my computer to access central storage. Is it will slow the process or work smoothly on Wi-Fi or the network attached.

Hello samir,i am wedding photographer based in india and i need redundancy of my data and access to it and i have my spare gaming computer lying around. Should i build truenas or buy synology? And Is truenas is safe enough for clients data??

Anyone know what to do when there are no disks available? Seems odd that it starts up and I can log into the dashboard, only to be stopped by no disks when creating a pool! Why can’t it see the one it’s using!😂

I did all the steps and it didn't work for me when I removed the USB the system entered the bios

Okay I've been trying to use truenas, but as you said in order to have the drive show up in any Windows machine I have to create a pool and users and stuff because Windows can't access it via route accounts because it's truenas restricted it after getting rid of freenas, do you know of any way I just want to take my old computer put all my old drives already have data on them except for one that will be the boot drive no RAID, no special permissions just had anyone who's on my home network be able to get whatever files they want on it I want to use my old computer for this I don't want to have to set up usernames and stuff for everyone I just want my fiancee my brother his fiancee etc, to put movies pictures what have you on that old computer and just have it accessible to everyone do you know any way to do that just basically turn my old computer into a drive with I have seven drives hooked up in there now but they're all different sizes and stuff and they all have data on it except for one that's going to be the boot drive I just want to make it so that we can just put stuff on there and share it with everyone else in the house

i cab't get on tho the server. Followed you fast imstarustions but i cst mkr it work

Or just connect the ext-hdd to your router

Add a new HD and see if works OR say turn off your PC accidentally, boot up and see if it works? Nope! not without a ton of errors, stay clear off these linux based NAS OSes unless you are a hardcore linux user. These are not for basic home users who want to just use their spare PC as network storage device.