Unraid allows me the most flexibility as a lab/home/selfhosted user. Nothing can come close. I can expand or contract my pools and have multiple pools for multiple purposes...all without needing to purchase multiple drives (using JBOD of varying sizes). I can use Desktop hard drives, NAS hard drives, SSD's, NVME's, and combine them together in any shape or form I want and I never lose data and I never have to worry that things will go sideways. I've been running over 2 years on the same array...have expanded it twice and lost 2 older drives and restored them completely without a hiccup. If you're a lab/home/selfhosted user, I recommend Unraid over all options. I gladly paid the top tier and will do so for any and all Unraid boxes I bring online in the future. It's worth it.

I think it's worth mentioning that in a zfs file system with multiple vdevs, if you lose 1 full vdev due to parity loss, you lose the entire array. It's common with zfs to rebuild an array once you have enough new drives to do so with more parity loss ie changing from a raidz1 to raidz2 or 3 with larger vdevs since it is technically safer. Its also worth mentioning that you are completely unable to remove a vdev once added so any expansion you make is permanent.

Thank you. As someone who is very new to making a NAS and home media server, I only have experience with raid at the hardware level from work. Making my own has been a very different experience, and since I'm new, I didn't want to get locked into something I couldn't necessarily grow with ease. This was extremely informative, and it helped me confidently make a choice.

Watch it all and watch it all to the end. Lots of great info to help plan for the future. Thankyou !!

Good comparison summary, Mike. I had been thinking about these different options for a while now and wondered just how practical TrueNAS would be for small business use. Will definitely look at UNRAID in the future. Thanks.

I’d like to hear your thoughts on true nas once you’re finished understanding it and gotten comfortable with it. Great to the point video, I like your clear explanations.

You can expand a zfs vdev, there is a setting called autoexpand in the zpool. You can expand and exchange for larger disks in the vdev. I think what you are trying to describe is to extend the vdev. Not the same.

Thank you for this video Mike! It was very helpful to watch

Thanks for the video. I have had a QNap NAS for years and I find it impenetrable. Thin Think it's so bloody confusing. It's apps are confusing. On the other hand, I love UNRaid. Just set one up. It's easier. Using an SSD cache even a single one that gets moved each night for editing is plenty fast.

Awesome vid this is a great no-nonsense review. Thanks!

Biggest problem with QNAP, Synology, etc is they're the new big target of ransomware. I mean QNAP got hit twice in less than a year? That doesn't bode well for your data unless you know what you're doing securing your device on your network. On top of considering the NAS at best is the average person's backup solution, or possibly worse, the parody of it is their "backup" solution. Having just setup a ZFS QNAP NAS(and still in the process of tweaking settings), and with all the ransomware news, I'm personally questioning if I should trust it with my data, or if I should instead turn it into a TrueNAS system.

Excellent video Mike. Thank you for making it. Would it be possible for you to make a video about how you use your NAS drive or drives to be used a the video files source for your video editing software? Thanks again! Keep it up!

Great summary!

Enterprise or small business level, I think TrueNAS is the right solution but for home use... storing movies, keeping home videos and backing up family photos ... Unraid is my favorite solution. I have used it for over 6 years now and have yet to lose a single file. Unraid also now supports ZFS file system as of version 6.12, so you can configure a server with either solution while having a nice, user friendly interface with a shallower learning curve. I remember window's home server (which I used) many many years ago (long since retired), both of these solutions are heads and shoulders above that.

nice video. yes expanding pool in zfs to add more drives was not possible without starting from scratch, but wasn't there news that in a future zfs update that would be a feature they will add? but when they will add that i have no idea. but until they do, then ya, something like QNAP QTS or unraid would be convenient for adding new additional drives. Thats not to say u can't add new drives for zfs, but u may have to start from scratch versus the other 2 alternatives last i checked. the other thing is ease of use. They all require some sort of tinkering and initial management. But out of them, truenas is probably a higher learning curve. When i went from QNAP QTS to truenas, i encountered that truenas ROOT s different from the share owner, which is intended for security. But for a new user, you may not have an idea about this and thus requires additional research to figure out how to setup. Whereas in QNAP QTS, it's way easier to do, although admitedly there is a lot of options in the admin User interface to navigate through. Unrad not much to say about that since i never used it, though i did look at what others said about it. Unraid requires a license purchase which is fair. But truenas is free and has zfs to boot. But the fact that unraid allows u to mix match different capacity drives is a good advantage to have. QNAP ur not limited to ext4 raid5 on qts, as they do have QUTS Hero which is their openzfs OS variant. I also think that zfs is the way to go ultimately, as it has raidZ checksum auto correction which performs much better than the usual ext4 raid5. though people say performance wise the later is better, but i don't notice the difference. Although if u are comparing between truenas core vs scale, then yes there is a performance difference hence why u should probably stick to core for now if u opt for truenas. So they all have their pros and cons. but for newbies, i would think that either qnap or unraid would be fine. Truenas is very good if u can manage it and have the time to learn it because it has a higher learning curve but it's worth it, in addition to being free to (though u have to purchase the hardware, which some people may not like to do, and if that was the case, then an off the shelf nas solution like a qnap would probly be better.)

Very useful, thank you Mr. Faucher.

Great video Mike. Thanks.

Hey, great video Mike, very helpful. One random question, what's that case you show up in 4:56? The one with the hard drive bay facing the outside instead of the PSU

other than truenas, qnap and unraid, there is also synology and asus stor to consider. currently i use truenas and qnap qts, i'm fine with either. other alternatives also look interesting.

Great video. I currently have an older QNAP right now. It works fine, but I want faster transfer speeds. Which right now are limited because of the older processor and the 5G USB NIC I am using. I am about to setup an UNRAID system if I can get it to at least match or faster transfer speeds with caching I will make it my main NAS.

I would love to hear your thoughts on this now that Unraid supports ZFS (if I am right).

I've been running a NAS for nearly 8 years now and it's always been Windows Server with Stablebit as the software JBOD system. I started with 4tB drives and after about 5 years switched to 8Tb drives and then a year later switched to 10Tb drives. I had one drive fail due to exceeding recommended MTBF but since I run most folders in redundancy everything on one drive is generally also on another. I also have 2 UNRAID servers one of which I'm setting up for remote backup so I'm somewhat familiar with that system too. I'm planning on a TrueNAS build for local backup of primarily movies and music. A friend introduced me to Windows and Stablebit and I remember laughing when he told me he had 22Tb on his server. We've both well exceeded that now. My server is storing 173Tb with about 50Tb duplicated. He's been running his system nearer to 12 years with no duplication and no data loss. Knock wood.

My Unraid USB drive failed after 5 years, so I said to myself, it is time to move to TrueNAS Scale. It was the biggest mistake I could make. It felt like comming from a polished experience to a random fan project full of bugs. TrueNAS feels like just a storage, if you want to run apps, you should install docker in VM, because Apps implementation is buggy as hell and TrueCharts is not even close to Community apps on Unraid. One simple example - if you want to create a bridge interface, you can't do it from the UI, it will not work properly. Also you can't pass the GPU to the VM, because Truenas for some reson needs a GPU to run?

what is your thoughts in open media vault in comparison to truenas and unraid?

Thanks for insight. What if I had a spare pc and a raid card ? What would be your suggestion in this case? Thanks

So if I'm building a DIY NAS (mostly for storing tons of random crap and setting up a media streaming library) and I start off with 3 HDDs all different sizes but in the future decide to increase size by a) swapping out smaller drives for bigger ones or b) expand it by adding a 4th HDD (max for my ITX case), would UNRAID be the best for that and give me reliability/recovery in case an HDD is lost?

Soooo glad youtube allow to change speed 🤣

unraid has added zfs to their file system options

Quick question Mike. I have a qnap tvs-671 maxed out with 14t for Plex and data storage. I am looking to upgrade to unRAID setup of an HP workstation (620?) It has a maxed out 12 core xeon with 24gigs of ECC. I am currently upgrading my PC from a Ryzen 2600 to a Ryzen 5600. I know when Plex is involved the better the CPU is, the better it is. But the passmark score of the i5 in the qnap is 5000ish, the xeon is 8400ish, and the r2600 is 13000ish. Being that I don't have ECC memory, would upgrading to the Ryzen setup be better for unRAID? Or whenever my new video card comes in just take the 1060 out of my current rig and put it in the unRAID box?

Paying for Unraid? Not happening, with so many quality free options/ alternatives…

I use NAS because my regular WD drive keeps failing.

forgot to mention, yes some stuff the nas makes easy like in QNAP, they can make ur nas available online pretty easily, but u probably shouldn't. because that exposes your nas and isn't safe. a more secure method would be setup pfsense vpn on the router f u need to have remote access. this requires more tinkering versus qnaps own easy method in regards to setting up remote access.

Hi how can i learn networking all everything You teach on youtube where can i reach you

Well, I don't think you spent enough time with TN, hearing what conclusions you came to.