I’ve been thinking about trying various software raids, truenas, unraid, freenas, etc. and I’m not sure which one to try first. Are there other major software options that I’m not listing? Which do you recommend I try first and which would you ultimately implement to be the central backup to about 5-6 pcs/laptops and three Synology 8 bay NAS?

I’ve been building my own PCs since I was a kid and I pretty much have most of the pcs I’ve ever built, some 8 cores and a spare 16 core pc. Only about a year ago did I finally dive into the world of NAS and RAID and ended up getting three eight bay Synology NAS boxes. They are doing alright for what I’m using them for. I thought at first I’d not be good at learning about these things but I dedicated about three months of reading and youtubing and feel I have a good understanding of the synology ecosystem and some general raid knowledge.

Now I’m ready to take the next leap. Instead of buying a different brand NAS I would like to build my own and try some of these free software options using old hardware.

I am a tinkerer but I’ve never really had to get into much anything dealing with NAS, servers, and commercial IT stuff. Once I’m done tinkering and learning the softwares I’d like to pick one and build a cheap huge cold storage for more tinkering and to back the other computers and three Synology boxes to.

What do you all think? Any tips? Any suggestions?

TLDR: another newb decided to post a question instead of researching this topic ad nauseum and wants to know if he should play around with truenas, unraid, freenas, or other software using older hardware, 8-16 cores, 16 to 64gigs ram.

Originally posted by u/itsthexypat on Reddit.com/r/datahoarder

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