Building a $122 DIY NAS, Local AI and Media Server - True Nas, Ollama, Jellyfin, Home Assistant

[@Obtuse94]

This was such a great tutorial. Easy to follow, realistic, touched on the basics, while also giving enough of the advanced parts. This rocked, thank you!

[@edmak7467]

I rarely comment, but it was simple and informative. Will rewatch again for my new (refurb) build

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Thank you for the support mate! Happy it helped :)

[@imranhasan6034]

For the first time i enjoyed a video of true nas tutorial & learnt something.

[@germancaperarojas4023]

Wow! Instant fan. Detailed and to the point tutorial, without annoying sponsors, ultra high tech stuff completely forbidden to the common pedestrian, or the rush to prove you are a knows-it-all geek. Never got it about TrueNAS until this video. For sure I'm going to try it bare metal, but I'm still looking for something rack mountable, cheap, quiet, and very energy cost effective like your build to install it. Off course, now I'm subscribed 🤜🤛

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

mate thanks so much for the feedback and kind words!! :D Really appreciate the support! :)

[@Merrlin]

Jesus Christ this video is soooo detailed. Thank you and Great job!

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thank you mate! :D

[@BorisChevreau]

I just restarted my Truenas Scale server project and was looking for some nice apps, that AI one definitely looks interesting! Love your network videos too, as I understand close to nothing about it, your channel is a godsent ! Saved and subscribed! Absolutely delightful content !!!!

[@BorisChevreau]

Any chance you have a discord server or somewhere to exchange with your community? I'd love to pick your brain on some stuff ! I live on the other side of the world (Philippines) so we do need to get a bit creative around here ;-)

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

wow man this comment just made my day!! Thanks mate!! If the channel grows a bit more I will definitely start a discord channel! I literally started this channel so I could connect with more people so definitely!!

[@BorisChevreau]

@@DigitalMirrorComputing It is well deserved! I have no doubt you will grow fast. Be sure to ping me when you do ;-) Meanwhile I'll go back to the rabbit whole of diggin into my ISP modem to make it in Bridge mode so I can follow your tutorials 🤣

[@curtis.albrecht.79]

@@BorisChevreau I live in Clark Freeport Zone (Angeles City - Pampanga area). And, I too would welcome an opportunity to subscribe to his Discord Server.

[@carlc9]

Great quality video, I was shocked you only had 900 subscribers. Well now you have 901 ;)

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

that's sweet mate! Thanks for the support! :D

[@dirinfo13]

Very clear and informative! Direct to the essentials. I subscribed. Now I look for more informations about the datasets, the folders, and SMB shares… Thank you.

[@beholder2033]

Great video, subscribed!!! The only note I would add is that the ram (if it is not ecc), and it is low cost or used ram, should be tested before making truenas operational as data always goes through the ram first and then goes to the disks.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Thank you so much for the support mate! That's a good point about the RAM!! Unfortunately I got regular ass RAM lol! It's working fine so far but yeah dude you are right! ECC RAM FTW!

[@beholder2033]

@@DigitalMirrorComputing You are welcome. On low cost nas without ram ecc I use OS like omv, unraid or just windows. If I have ram ecc I prefer truenas instead. In general with zfs ram ecc., with btrfs, ext4 or ntfs also ram no ecc works peacefully... and definitely a UPS in all cases. Most "famous" nas do not use ram ecc but with file system btrfs or ext4.

[@beholder2033]

@@DigitalMirrorComputing I also quickly watched some of your other videos, congratulations! They are very helpful and clear with great editing, I hope you reach at least 10000 subs soon. Have a nice day!

[@arielpalencia_official6358]

Nice, I learn so much. Hopefully i can do this builds next year

[@mindshelfpro]

You bought replacement parts without checking if the computer works first? The boot drive in TrueNAS Scale isn't used for storage so the 128GB SSD is fine.. even a 32GB SSD will be fine. This build could have been much cheaper.

[@deepaknanda1113]

I have just used 2 pen drive (usb3) in mirror mode for boot drive, and used the ssd for app and vm

[@SteveStowell]

Prove it

[@Cyber_Gas]

​@@SteveStowelljesus look up true nas

[@VEE727]

Yeah most of the parts were unnecessary. So it can be done even cheaper

[@thyphear]

The NAS name, and the anime admission got my sub. :D

[@duke9657]

I wish NAS videos would actually go through or simulate a hard drive failure and how to recover. It's nice and all when things are all set up but when one of the drives go, how to recover is no where in sight.

[@bryonssmith]

Just found you today. Thought you were a much bigger channel based on the production value. Subbed and liked and commented for the algorithm.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

You made my day dude! Thanks for the nice comment! :)

[@KingParzival]

Dude, this video ROCKS. Thank you!

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thanks mate! :)

[@mc25141]

Wow thank you. Your clear, easy to understand and fun explanation inspire me to build DIY NAS myself! There are some old PC laying around my house, but I don't want to throw them away. At least taking one of them to build a NAS should at least save some small e-waste.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Mate you just made this channel's dream come true! Which is to inspire and help people build their own systems! Thanks for watching! :)

[@devinhedge]

Within seconds you had me with the Slipknot.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Best comment ever!!!!

[@wagnonforcolorado]

I think this is a great use for an older computer. Does the HBA card add any features over the motherboard's SATA connectors? Also, do you use the 500 GB SSD you bought for anything other than running TrueNAS? I have a very similar setup, but I just used the motherboards SATA connectors and I have a 128GB SSD I installed TrueNAS on.

[@SodalisUK]

By editing the install script you can make the boot pool 16gb and then use the rest of the SSD as an apps pool.

[@hiyo3]

If you have enough SATA ports for your drives, then an HBA controller will be of no use. esp. when only using spinning rust. HBA cards are typically used when you have a ton of drives you want to hook up

[@joshluvhalo]

With the hba you could probably use some used sas hdds which can sometimes be cheap. I got some very used but perfectly functional drives @ $10 for 4tbs but I bought 10.

[@TazzSmk]

not really because without VT-d (also inability to passthrough HBA) you could just passthrough individual HDDs to the VM in Proxmox

[@dirinfo13]

@@SodalisUKCould you please add a link to explanations on how to?

[@SheLeftMeUnsupervised]

Tried Truenas along time ago. Community wasn't all that helpful. Insulting more than anything. Much prefer Unraid. To each their own. Both are good platforms. Got me curious about the Ollama. Going to look into that. Have home assistant (bare metal on a nuc) and jellyfin. Fun video!

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Oh no way mate, sorry you had a bad time with the truenas community... I was a bit luckier and never had any complaint! They were super helpful with all my problems! I like unraid too!! It's rock solid and you get to just add drives when you run out of space, which is something you can't do with truenas due to ZFS limitations! Thanks for watching mate and for the support!

[@cybercdh]

This was a really great video, I learned a lot. Thank you for such clear explanations and fun walkthroughs.

[@diogo5867]

Hey, I dont get why you bought a HBA controller. Can you explai why you need it what it does etc? Thanks

[@maselitoamazigh1385]

i think he initially wasnt gonna run truenas baremetal and therefore he would have needed the hba so he can use it to passthrought the whole hba to truenas running as a VM without any hiccups but since the cpu didnt support vt-d he had to run it baremetal which yes he woudnt need the hba for

[@chrisumali9841]

Thanks for the demo and info. this is a great video. Have a great day

[@stevevlahos1]

Great video. I think I will do the same. I’ve always wanted to try truenas. The ad blocker looks sick.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thanks mate! Good luck! :)

[@jerryaycock]

Looking for advice. Waiting for a few parts. I have a few spare drives laying around. 30tb - 8 tb - 7 tb. I have 500 g ssd for boot. Plan on Plex- OLLAMA - Adguard - keeping Home Assistant on separate machine, but want backups from both systems on NAS looking on which drive to put where. I have almost zero knowledge of NAS's - had an old one years ago.

[@madhumuppala2274]

Thanks for the detailed instructions. The steps are very friendly and self explanatory. My use case is slightly different. I also got a used Tower ( MSI B250M Bazooka) with 250GB samsung SSD and I also brought three 8TB HGST hard drives. I was planning to make it as personal NAS to act as home server, and cloud storage for Photos and Media backup. I was planning to use Ubuntu 22 LTS, NextClould. I have few questions and I would appriciate if you can help answering. 1) If I wanted to use NextCloud and CloudFlare, can I still use turechats? 2) Do I really need to use HBA ? I am not sure if my Motherboard really supports it. Though the motherboard says RAID in bios, I could not make it to work. 3) I also want to install the setup first using the SSD only and mount HDDs later. Do you have any specific recommedation for my use case? Sorry for many questions at a time and Thanks in advance.

[@esrevinu.]

awesome tutorial, however, TrueNAS Scale now changed over, removed Kubernetes, and is now running its own docker install system, including the ability to directly install Dockge or Portainer right from their apps system in TrueNAS, and alternatively, the ability to also use Dockercompose and roll out YAML, alledly haha. Ill have to see if you have some more recent videos on this. Very informative.

[@treffermedia9202]

What is the best Plugin/App to scan your images and even files locally? If you give it some time, can a ugreen NAS with (12th Gen, 5-core 6-thread Intel Pentium) +32GB RAM + 2x 2TB NVMEs as cache, scan it all, and answer questions about it? The ugreens native OS can scan images by default, and claims nothing leaves the NAS. Are there open source options available to run local?

[@khanhthedag7269]

Hi, I have quetion: "TrueNas Core and TrueNas Scale", why you use TrueNas Scale and not TrueNas Core?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Core is based on FreeBSD and scale on Debian. Also scale has support for more apps and I have a feeling it's the direction IXsystem wants to go. Personally I don't really like FreeBSD myself, I find it a pain to fix when things go wrong. Debian is a lot easier! But thats just my opinion lol :D

[@dante-tm1pg]

i have some small office work if you have time, i need basic small server config with 2 nas buffalo drives

[@avan2208]

does the adblocker work for youtube videos? Because it doesn't for me.

[@faikwong]

Very informative video👍

[@PrankHouseClark]

does it also support having home cameras

[@therealmcgimmick]

So TruNas needs a dedicated boot drive for install? As in if I have windows and Linux on my ssd I can install trunas on the same drive? Does it need to be always on or can it be shut down periodically?

[@ShoaibChaudary]

Great video. I have a question I have dell optiplex 7010 i7 3770 can I run jellyfin 1080 or even 4k because you didn't show the results for jellyfin. Thanks

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Hey mate! Thanks for the comments! Check if the processor has IGPU support. You can also transcode with CPU, it's just a bit slower! Hope it helps

[@fern8035]

This is great, I have an old tower with the same cpu. I'm going to try this out, thanks.

[@superjunaid]

Thanks for the video, did you mention anywhere to add TrueCharts

[@satyanarayanbhanja1922]

Exactly what I wanted. Thank you.

[@LorenzoAmati1990]

great video! i learned a lot from it, for the first time i managed to do something and have my little nas and media center. Do you have an alternative to truecharts? seems deprecated!

[@elfakirabsoluto]

I have to say that I always try to watch everything I can in regadars to home NASs, but this video started with what I believe some already know. But the last 10 minutes..... boyyyy..... VERY interesting setup.... I've seen the setup explained in other ways but I liked how you explained them !

[@NyneIX9]

The guitar bit got me lol

[@cyberwaves]

TrueCharts Scale deprecated?

[@ThomasTomchak]

I love your positive energy. Great video.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Thanks for the kind words!

[@kylarberzins]

Does truenas allow Kodi?

[@sethperry6616]

If your willing to buy second hand like you did with the HBA, why wouldn't you buy ram second hand? There's so much used ddr3 available.

[@andrewmadrid1365]

Snap. great job, subscribed!

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thanks for the support! :D

[@khanhthedag7269]

very good, like your tut.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thanks mate! :)

[@SodalisUK]

Research how to make the truenas boot pool 16GB when installing so that you can use the rest of the SSD as an apps pool.

[@nigelholland24]

Nice video question. Are you U.K. based your community page says London. And you set your time zone to London. So why do you say bucks instead of pounds. Thanks.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

UK based yes for 20 years! But I learned English with American TV and Eddie Murphy movies haha! I also think if I say pounds some ppl from other countries might be confused. "Bucks" feels more inclusive... Maybe I am wrong lol

[@dwaynep9346]

This was an amazing tutorial video thank you

[@DrHeribertHilke]

awesome video I subbed. Im barely dipping my toes in home servers. I had a QNAP forever but it stopped working 1 week ago. I am thinking TrueNAS will be my choice as well. Just having some trouble because the PC I'm using is old and I cannot get the TrueNAS software to detect the Hardrives. Its a D20 Thinkstation and I think it has a SATA controller of some sort.

[@Sakistns]

Niiice... What is the power consumption in idle mode?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

between 35W and 40W mate! Which is really not that bad at all IMO! :)

[@nelenele246]

Why HBA adapter for two SATA HDD? You already have SATA adapter on the motherboard.

[@Jercydev]

Simple and informative , Thank you

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

you're very welcome mate! :)

[@SHO1989]

Ok, I subscibed. Now, can we have a similar video for installation of Opensense?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

It's on my list my friend! Keep an eye out and thanks for the support! :)

[@OPMfan65]

Good idea, I'm transitioning out of pFsense. I'm still using pfSense in my home network but running Opnsense in a Protecli hardware in my Home Lab fine tuning it before putting it in the live in my Home network.

[@szedison]

what is HBA card？

[@kirileman]

Great video. But 40 W is no go for me (idle ?). I believe that a NAS like that can go down to 15 W idle (with the hard disks sleeping), but with very specific hw (psu is important too).

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Yeah man intel CPU is hungry! 😃

[@kirileman]

@@DigitalMirrorComputing yes. That's why I would a) sell mobo and cpu and buy 1151 + intel 7th gen or b) sell everything and buy something like an HP Prodesk 800 G3. Both choices should need less than 20 W on idle (with 2 hd, 1 ssd, 1 nvme and 2.5G nic) But that's just me.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

@@kirileman yeah mate totally get it! If consumption is an issue selling the whole thing and getting something like an elite desk is an option! Would be smaller rig also. I don't mind it and it gives me more juice to run more apps and AI (I might get a cheap GPU for it...)

[@garyrowe58]

Can a NAS use DAS?

[@F5alconsHouse]

Great quality for a small channel.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thanks mate! for the support and for watching! :D

[@klaasadevries]

Love the content

[@kristof9497]

good catch.

[@alvarohernandez_365]

Very nice video. One issue i face is that the Ollama WebUi is not working for me. Any ideas what im doing wrong or hoento troubleshoot. But, great freqking video. Definitely gained another follower.

[@muhammadowais2492]

watch the NetworkChuck's video titled "host ALL your AI locally", he did it and all steps are ez to follow

[@nedgligich]

Why did you replace the Power Supply ??? If it was working, blow it out and re use it.

[@B_r_u_c_e]

Thank you.

[@penttagone]

Awesome dude! Love the shirt man.. they’re an amazing band.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Hells yeah mate!

[@notaras1985]

How can such a weak machine support local LLMs?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

It does! Not very fast but it does! If you get a GPU it won't even matter because the model runs from the GPU

[@notaras1985]

@@DigitalMirrorComputing so a 500-700 euros used rig, would suffice for local LLMs in eastern Europe?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

It depends on which llm you want to run. A 7B parameter model like codelama for example would run on that machine or run a VM with 4 vcpu and 8gb ram IF it has a GPU like an Nvidia gtx1080. I think I have a video about that

[@GeekendZone]

Good Job thanks for this.

[@soldierboi9450]

Wow very cool

[@zaneklavina8828]

Nice 🔥🔥🔥

[@MrRohit639u]

you almost replaced everything, and dint said what CPU it was. If its really 10 years old I guess, it might be Pentium, which might be trash good to throw it too. I saw in bios screen i7, which means you changed that also ?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

4:25

[@rickythetube]

the big problem of DIY NAS is the power consumption, before i did few diy nas, but so many problems here and there, I would only choose synology nas now.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

@@rickythetube you're right there! But this set up consumes as much as a Synology. But if you get a dell ellite desk with a less powerful CPU you can get 18w on idle. And that's 'diy'

[@helenmoran6689]

i’m new to all of this , why is this considered a nas and not home lab

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Well Nas is a platform to store data, a home lab is just a concept. I guess a nas is part of a home lab if that makes sense! Thanks for watching!

[@itworld-ks2886]

excellent video thanks

[@fabriglas]

Illama sends data to meta?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

naa mate, that runs localy

[@postnick]

I literary just retired that exact motherboard last week. I had a i7-3770 and 32 gigs Of ram though.

[@jrdoughty13]

I felt that string snap...

[@klaasadevries]

Nice shirt!

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Thanks mate! :)

[@C0LPAN1C]

Use ventoy for usb boot. Just copy isos!

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

wouldn't work in this instance! I've tried it ;)

[@ashman2023]

Nice except you really got ripped off on the HDs

[@jonathanfabian4973]

great video man

[@ikkuranus]

I've never seen lsi sas cards that cheap. You sure yours isn't counterfeit?

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

Hehehe well if it is, it's working pretty well. ,😅

[@markshaz8691]

Good video

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

thanks mate!

[@afin555]

Not recommended TrueNAS is for special people When hardware breaks down, HDD cannot be moved Long-term operation with a self-built TrueNAS machine is a dream Recommended Redpill Loader + Synology DiskStation Manager (DSM) Even if the chassis breaks down, you can quickly transfer the HDD to another piece of hardware The GUI is easy to understand even for beginners

[@dirinfo13]

Any link would be helpful, please.

[@Mo7ammed.Siddiq]

Awesome

[@SukiSuki-cr6hv]

how 4tb hdd is wayyy cheaper in Indonesia when any other parts is way more expensive in Indonesia!?

[@PabloSpacebar]

Nice

[@phychmasher]

Guess we need a new one now that TrueCharts is donezo.

[@עינהרע]

Should have added a decommissioned mining GPU for ollama

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

ha! nice one"" :D

[@tcttvradio]

$377 build, you have to add the drives. How do i figure out what my 192.168 numbers are?

[@shephusted2714]

you didn't need hba or trunas really - just use samba - decent content overall #don't break debian

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

You don't need an hba if you can bypass the chipset controller. But ixsystems recommends you do. Have a look at their docs. Thanks for the support man

[@michaels5167]

My God. How slow is the AI on that? 😂

[@phychmasher]

7:00 Indeed! Who cares! I'm 41 and I get to show my 11 year old son all the best anime now!

[@ccyberhub]

If you think of using this with ollama better open up wallet because ollama uses vram not ram like this guy said, so you will need at least 6gb vram gpu just to run the weak models

[@SebastianPerezG]

I know when someone is intelligent when he is wearing a Slipknot Tshirt.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

ha! Slipknot rules!! :D \_/

[@NicksStuff]

An N100 is way faster, costs $99 and uses 75% less power. Why use an old Celeron?

[@Lukas93E]

650W and additional 16GB RAM - much "overkill" for a old system re-used as a NAS

[@JynOsiris]

Gig Nic sounds like a slur

[@rolandleyco573]

TrueCharts is dead just letting you know

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

@@rolandleyco573 I know... Sucks right... ,😔

[@BenState]

Lol, but with $150 worth of HDDs so actually $270 minus shipping to the UK? Bro, that's just clickbait as no matter which logic you use, to have a NAS you need storage. Not $122 bucks, but more like $300+ with second hand storage.... oof.

[@DigitalMirrorComputing]

All of that was bought in the UK and when you buy a NAS (e.g synology for example) they don't come with HDD.

[@BenState]

@@DigitalMirrorComputing So pounds or dollars? No shipping? Still not a $122 NAS under any definition. Click bait.

[@TsiRoadkill]

Meh I will pay 60$ all day long to use any size drives I like