Building an Offsite Backup NAS
That could very easily be a reality for me, so it’s time to do something about it. This is my old, terribly painted Cooler Master mod project system that I’ve been using on and off for something like eight years at this point. The biggest reason for me picking this system is that beyond the fact it’s built and I don’t use it much right now, it’s also using the Cooler Master MasterCase – a chassis designed for modularity, which includes endless hard drive bays. I’ve also made a little purchase – specifically three Seagate Exos X18 18TB hard drives. In this video I’m going to get the system up and running – which includes switching to an APU to save power – then get it set up with I think TrueNAS Core as my OS of choice. I use UNRAID for my main production server I call Overkill, but I think TrueNAS is going to be a better fit for this off-site machine. So, let’s get building!
I was going to replace the Ryzen 1700 that’s been in here for something like five years with a Ryzen 3400G APU meaning I wouldn’t need a graphics card installed for it to boot since it’ll be running headless anyway (as in without a display attached) but even with a BIOS update the board wouldn’t boot with that installed so I’ve swapped it back to the 1700 and I replaced the RX 5600 XT that was in here with an RX 460. It’ll draw even less power at idle so that’s fine. I’m leaving the 16GB of basic Crucial DDR4 that’s been in here for years as it’s been perfectly reliable which is what I care most about here. I’m also installing a Corsair MP300 240GB SSD as my boot drive. It might also act as a cache although I’ve not decided on that yet. Next is the hard drive cages. I’m using the MasterCase here because it’s a brilliant and modular chassis. I have a two bay drive cage in the bottom already, and I’m slotting in another two bay and a three bay. They just push into some slots in the back and use two thumb screws to secure themselves in. Why 7 drive bays? Well first because I want to space the drives out so they don’t overheat, and second if I need to add drives to my pool later on, having these already in here makes things easier for me. The drives themselves just clip into the drive sleds, then they just slide into place. I’ve also added a 140mm fan up front to blow air directly over them for extra peace of mind.
Right, so that’s the system ready to go, now to install TrueNAS. I’ve got it on a bootable USB stick I made with Rufus, so let’s get it installed. I went through the BIOS enabling all the virtualisation and IOMMU settings just in case I want to run docker containers, VMs or do anything like GPU passthrough for acceleration. Then you just boot from your USB stick, install TrueNAS, set an admin password, then in my case I’m going to stick this downstairs to do the initial setup through the web UI. Let me set up a monitor and I’ll get this set up!
