NAS OS Showdown! // TrueNAS vs Unraid

[@maxmustermann194]

You have massive balls to make such a video. It's basically religion wars between the two :D

[@JokingChickenn]

The best system will always be the one that works best for you… But it is truenas ;P

[@andreas.grundler]

These are just skirmishes. The real war rages over the question of whether pineapple belongs on a pizza or not. 😁

[@aflawrence]

The best solution is always the one that workes best for each individual and their use needs. PfSense vs OPNsense vs Sophos Home vs UDM, Trunas vs Unraid, and the list goes on....find what works for you and your use case at the time. Keep learning and constatnly re-evalute your needs. This is what the homelab is all about.

[@darthkielbasa]

I couldn’t agree with you more! I’m here just for the comments and lols

[@christianlempa]

Haha thanks @maxmustermann194 :D

[@TheAsjdj]

The reason why i picked unRaid was simply do the harddrive mix-match function. both are fine. unRaid fits my need better and that's all there is to it really.

[@user-be3mk6cg4c]

Same, and it's been great overall for me. Even VM's have been pretty good. I spin one up every now and then for foldingathome and it's been fine.

[@christianlempa]

That's indeed one of the most compelling features

[@ronsafranic5177]

That's one of my primary complaints about Techno Tim's video he barely even mentioned this feature and didn't seem to think it mattered much. It also the reason I went with unraid.

[@TheAsjdj]

@@ronsafranic5177 He mainly focus on the enterpris feature set, unRaid is made for home users and small business. Most people will not mention this feature as it does break some of the enterpris feature set or make the drives unstable as they don't "match". unstable in this regard is not a concern for small businesses of around 10 ish people and lower. I wouldn't run unRaid in a 100+ enterpris aka a real enterpris but that's beside the point. For a small operation of like 10 ish people that isn't a "enterpris" its fine.

[@andreas.grundler]

I use both Unraid and TrueNAS. I use Unraid on a server where my goal was minimal power consumption and I use TrueNAS Scale on a NAS that I only boot up once a week to do weekly backups which includes mirroring the snapshots from my Proxmox Server.

[@TechHut]

Proxmox > UNRAID > TrueNAS Scale > Synology DSM > TrueNAS Core > Zima/CasaOS > OpenMediaVault > UGREEN

[@Sahta99]

Please put in this equation that OpenMediaVault can run on a potato. If you're tech savvy and have ancient hardware (like me) nothing beats OMV. Yes, you need to go to terminal every couple of days, but at least you learn something

[@TechHut]

@@Sahta99 vaild

[@Hellsfoul]

what about Qnap?

[@marconwps]

​@@Sahta99 Xigmanas ;) instead of OMV !! Freebsd !!

[@bufanda]

@@Hellsfoul QNAP is only for the brave and the bold just like XCP-NG or Nutanix ;)

[@NetworkChuck]

great thumbnail

[@christianlempa]

Thank you ☺️ I worried if someone still recognizes the technology 😂

[@Shocker99]

@@christianlempa Save button icons? 😉🤣 I didn't realise you were that old.

[@Robert65536]

Wow, 3D printed Save icons!

[@TheAsjdj]

@@christianlempa 1.44 mb or the bigger version? The IBM version was king

[@christianlempa]

@@Shocker99 I take this as a compliment 😆

[@guardianali]

PROTIP UNRAID: Use a USB to MicroSD stick and put the Unraid installer on the microsd card. When it installs and the unraid key attaches itself, it will do so to the usb stick portion and not the microsd sd card. By doing it that way, you can always now take the SD card out, make a mirror backup every once in a while...or even replace it down the line...with no Key issues long as your using the same USB stick. Also I find it ironic that people complain about Unraid being a paid license, and XYZ is free when it also lets you mix and match any drive you have laying around to maximize savings instead of being forced to use the same size drives ...and if you ever need to expand via swapping HDs for larger ones, its all or nothing. THAT is a money sink. I bought the lifetime license for 250 and it paid for itself from the first 8 random size drives I threw at it and it just worked instead of buying a bunch of same size ones.

[@RocketLR]

As a cloud engineer that builds container native applications, i prefer Docker over Kubernetes.. Kubernetes is for applications that need high availability while being used by hundreds of thousands of people... But for smaller things such as homelab containers, docker is just perfect. You can even achieve HA with docker swarm but the applications become more complex then as well..

[@philippemiller4740]

Both of these are about to release big changes. Unraid has just released beta4 for it's 7.0 version which brings major changes. Truenas SCALE Electric Eel also made a lot of improvements, not just docker support. It's due to release within the next 2 weeks. Could you revisit this subject before next year to see how far they come?

[@kanes5105]

I've been using the TrueNAS beta for a few weeks, solid so far! I'll be adding the production version when out to a new build.

[@christianlempa]

We will see, I'm not sure if I'm gonna make a new version of this video in the near future, I don't think these 2 updates will change much on the storage and ui topics

[@chimpo131]

​@@christianlempasucks to suck! 😂

[@canoozie]

As silly as it sounds, I'm abandoning TrueNAS, and not even considering unraid anymore. I'm adding storage to each of my virtualization nodes, and I've set up ceph across it. With 3 nodes, replication factor of 2, I can lose any one and no problem. Since my virtualization nodes have the local storage, it's sometimes faster, and other times about the same speed. Since my use case of TrueNAS was only for storage, and not apps, it's fine.

[@alvcm7208]

I also find it funny how none of these storage solution comparisons mention ceph.

[@canoozie]

@@alvcm7208 Yeah it's seriously underrated as a solution. That said in a homelab, or small business, it's probably not worth it because it's not quite point and click like the zfs interfaces have become.

[@_mew]

I’m so pleased with the Docker implementation so far on Electric Eel beta. I’d never pay for Unraid as the licensing fee seems kind of stupid for what you get. I run everything off of my TrueNAS server and have had no issues (minus migrating some data to the beta :p)

[@ronsafranic5177]

Good video! Unlike Techno Tim who did a simelar video and ended up getting unsubscribed by me for bias you have done a very good job of giving all the facts and not showing bias! Keep it up! Subscribed!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much 😁

[@andreas.grundler]

The problem with Techno Tim is that he really wanted to pick a winner. Unfortunately, at the same time, the other system is then declared the loser, which of course offends the fans of that system. He also didn't understand the concept of bias. He seems to assume that bias only has something to do with financial interests. No one is free from bias. That's why it's important to be aware of it.

[@greenduckgamer]

I'm glad to know that I wasn't the only one that thought Techno Tim's review was super weird and bias. Really put me off on him for a bit.

[@andrewbroadfort6856]

Storage performance should have had its own section. You should have led with that. Unraid performance sucks.

[@frankwong9486]

Read not too bad but write so slow (cache is workaround but it still slow when move from cache to array) They have added zfs support but I will go truenas if need zfs Unraid is better on power saving and less noisy ( it only wake up parity and the disk where the data you access living ) while most other os/raid will wake more disk in the array If you lost way more disk where parity can't cover, you still got data remain and accessible on other working disk . Of course you still need 3-2-1 to cover everything .

[@Uberragen21]

It's slow because USB drives are slow. Personally, I'll never run a server or NAS OS from a USB drive. USB drives are notorious for short lifespan, overheating, and generally performance degradation.

[@IceSerbia]

@@Uberragen21 it only boot from usb. it run from RAM drive. only config and plugins are changing on usb drive

[@RocketLR]

@@Uberragen21 I've never used unraid but if it writes to usb constantly when operating, the USB would die after a few months x'D

[@Kathlanus]

It's almost like you need to choose the right tool for the job :D

[@PiperUsmc]

Its almost juust like that :P

[@EltonKuzniewski]

With the changes on License, Unraid now is a perpetual payment (or you will not update your nas anymore, which brings a lot of security issues)

[@brianboston9554]

Not strictly correct, you can still get perpetual it’s just more money 😢

[@DenisLaventure]

I have been running Unraid for 9 years from the same old Lexar JumpDrive Firefly USB 2.0 drive. As long as you don’t export your USB drive as a share, the OS only write configuration changes on it. The entire OS run from memory after initial boot from the USB drive.

[@try-that]

I'm still staying within OMV, it does all I want, especially regarding docker, it does do lxc, vm and kubernettes 🙂

[@JokingChickenn]

Definitely good enough for most!

[@bitlinkchai]

whoa... when did OMV get LXC support?

[@MrPir84free]

I use OMV because my one little all SSD NAS is running an ARM processor. Still, it works well enough.

[@magnus33john]

Actually you can install truenas on a usb just like unraid. It tends to get avoided these days because the writing of information tends to kill off usb drives faster then normal drives. There was also a speed issue back in the day but that's less of a factor now that there is usb 3. The big problem are usbs themselves where you can get huge variance in reliability even with name brands. For hard drives there a much tighter control so there less of a issue there.

[@MindForgedManacle]

@ 4:45 "The operating system boots from a USB drive" TrueNas Scale lets you do this too. That's how mine is running on my main server. Not sure if you were saying it couldn't.

[@OrigMaelstrom]

Was just about to say this...I do not boot off a USB for my actual systems anymore, but I still could if I wanted to. Only 5 minutes in and wondering if this sets the tone for the rest of the video

[@trippinonaduck1379]

Does truenas scale load and run all in memory?(Real question, not sure) Unraid doesn't really use the usb after the boot and would be worried if doing much read/write on the usb(thumb)drive itself.

[@kanes5105]

@@trippinonaduck1379 good question! I'm also interested.

[@talktomenowxbmc]

Unraid = multimedia powerhouse TrueNas = storage powerhouse

[@PiperUsmc]

Something about seeing those floppy disks in the thumbnail. This reaches back to my childhood days...

[@ghostedragon964]

For some odd reasons, i started with truenas despite ppl saying its easier on unraid, but truenas is way easier and more begineer friendly to me. Self hosting journey started with truenas

[@MenkarX]

For me Unraid was to slow. So, I ended up using Truenas as storage and Unraid as docker server. All that inside Proxmox.

[@stokley121]

Something to note is the recent addition of Docker Compose in Scale. This is huge for me since that's how I manage all containers on VMs currently. It being native makes me feel much better than community based on the unRAID side. I typically separate NAS & compute for network segmentation but I have a huge box for TrueNAS Scale, and the addition of compose is tempting.

[@christianlempa]

I'm excited about it as well!

[@brockwilkie6022]

I think this is the best of these I have seen recently. I just wishe dyou had been able to wait a few months to let the new TrueNas version come out with Docker. Yeah there is always something new but I think it will be a big deal, enough that it might make this video irrelevant in the near future. Love the content though!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you, man! :) I thought I'd still do it now, since we don't know if Docker really changes the game, also any other topics will be still valid.

[@ghangj]

Beautiful breakdown. I think the divide is people trying to make decision on what software to use of their data. Personally unraid is great but turnas is set and never touch.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much :)

[@kanes5105]

I've had TrueNAS scale running for a few months on some old hardware. I've since ordered a crap load of parts to build a proper system. I've been on the fence in regards to both TrueNAS and Unraid, but I'll be going with TrueNAS. My reason, data integrity, and security. Everything will be new in regards to parts, BTW, I'm replacing a Synology DS918+ that's been running continuously for the past 6+ years with zero failures, or issues. That box will be relegated to cameras (surveillance, and backups) for now. Synology's system is great for anyone wishing for something simple and reliable, but now with them pushing customers to use "THEIR" drives on new and future hardware, it's time to look elsewhere. This new build will be using more power then anything I currently have, but fortunate for me, I live in a part of the world with cheap power, British Columbia. The province just brought Site-C dam on line, so I should be fine...lol, yes the environmentist won't be happy, but I really need to do this!

[@AlanKlughammer]

FYI you can upgrade the USB drive for UNRAID for free once per year, or more often if you just ask (I had a USB drive fail after only a few months. UNRAID support was great.

[@aflawrence]

I began on Unraid and when they introduced ZFS i migrated my media and storage libraries over to that as I prepare to move away from Unraid. Since then I have deployed a proxmox with zfs and cockpit server that i discovered via 45 drives and this will become the platforrm for my new build. I intend to use docker and ansible to manage my arr stack, home automation and storage needs. My goal would be to eventually build out with ceph to have high availibility storage.

[@solverz4078]

I have used unraid in the past JUST for it's array technology. Yeah there id snapraid but it has limitations that the UNRAID array does not.

[@ich777]

Wie immer ein gutes Video, ist immer ein schwieriges Thema die beiden Systeme zu vergleichen weil das meistens schnell zu Kontroversen führt. 😅

[@christianlempa]

Vielen Dank! :)

[@Polarzbek]

Wait you mean to tell me that people have opinions about technology? I'm shocked! 😂 Great video as always Christian!

[@christianlempa]

Haha thanks man :D

[@LeumasLSNTV]

Yeeeeeh ! a Homelab video who dosent talk about the brand new ubiquiti NAS LEEEEEEEESGO

[@christianlempa]

lol :D

[@imjooboy]

If you don’t care about reliability and data protection, then just create single drive VDEVs and build a pool from them. Then grow the pool by just adding additional single drive vdevs.

[@truckerallikatuk]

A very fair breakdown. Nicely done.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you :)

[@guillaumearchambault905]

Openmediavault ! :p

[@sarunasj]

Bad timing. TrueNAS has major release around the corner

[@rumplin]

As history has shown, the first release won't be as great as expected, so let's wait for the release and then for 2 or 3 hotfixes.

[@Mr76Pontiac]

I'm already in the TrueNAS ecosystem, and without watching the video, I'm a firm believer in that both are good in their own way with their own tweaks and switches that it comes down to personal preference and requirements. That said, I'm making this post only because of the over sized floppy disks. I'm tempted to do a 3D print or get some cardboard and hang them somewhere.....

[@terranceoliver8935]

I use unraid coming from zero knowledge of Linux. Just because of the easy to use case.... But after learning a bit more of Linux and docker, trueNAS def has great use cases that you cannot get on, unraid. So to me it's a preference thing with our individual use cases.

[@hardingd100]

I love and use UNRAID but only being able to log into the webui as root is not a good idea. Also, the kvm implementation isn’t the same: you can’t run pfsense with virtualized NICs. At the end of the day, it’s a hammer. Use the tool that suites your needs.

[@LMLecho]

They recently just switched to a subscription model it was a one time payment before and they still grandfathered that

[@RenaudSchweingruber]

I went with TrueNAS Scale for performance since I use a full SSD array. On my 10Gb network, it just flies. Also next 24.10 version does support vdev expansion which was my only concern with TrueNAS.

[@JohnSmith-yz7uh]

If you dont wanna trust a USB stick but dont wanna use a SATA or M.2 slot, you can get a USB internal to USB-A adapter and use a 2.5" USB SATA adapter. Worked for years with a 32GB SSD on my Server. Just mind the power budget of USB, dont use hungry drives and dont hope for speed on it, but its just an OS drive.

[@jhjacobs81]

For me, the only true NAS os is Alpine Linux :) nice video!

[@RomanRanzmaier]

I orderd 2 Terramaster F6-424 Max today. So I'll use TOS for a while 🙂 Theoretically I could run Unraid or TruNAS on it

[@lord-baltimore]

It‘s Truenas Scale for sure. I don‘t even have to watch this video to answer the question.

[@romayojr]

i really need to try Unraid to see what’s best for my homelab. do they offer a trial version?

[@JokingChickenn]

Trial version of 30 days Tried both and chose truenas

[@bufanda]

For a DiY NAS I always would go TrueNAS, although I am a bit torn between Scale and Core. But then I think a simple Linux installation and managing everything with ansible is maybe for me still the best way. Why waste resources on an UI when you can manage it via ansible and CLI. Also as I am not really a fan of having storage and compute on one machine I tend more to having a XCP-NG Pool with an attached SAN. But I am always overkill in my home network :D

[@studioxxswe]

I dont use any of these (use ESOS) , but just wanted to say I LOVE the thumbnail :) nice

[@kurjajuur]

Money helped me decide.

[@Glatze603]

Hi Christian, start a rating about the preferences of your subscribers: truenas (scale/core), unraid, omv, linux-server (debian/ubuntu/oder distro), other 🙂

[@christianlempa]

Oh, you don't want to hear what I have to say about linux-server :D

[@dev.sharif]

I guess your camera shutter speed is a little bit off, Doesn't matter great content btw...😊

[@Wan_s]

Perfect timing ! I'm building my NAS next week and was searching for the best OS

[@JokingChickenn]

Same! Proxmox is definitely the best base tho Then you can try them all!

[@christianlempa]

Perfect! :D

[@chimpo131]

it's not unraid, that's for sure 😂

[@iFixJapan]

My best choice is, using debian server and using cockpit GUI to configure my RAID 5. les resoucers and less configurations. Samba share as ususal and if need to install Plex or apache or anything using linux command just fine for me.

[@imjooboy]

After years of running TrueNAS, starting with FreeNAS and redundant USB flash drives, it’s a bad idea to put the OS on usb drives. I’ve had a number of flash drives die on me. Putting them on small low cost SSD drives is a much better approach.

[@alexanders9763]

TrueNAS fits my needs better, but both have advantages and disadvantages

[@olennex]

Tried both, went with Cockpit

[@forsaken1776]

I'm team orange I've had it about a year maybe a bit longer. the only thing I don't like about unraid is the USB stick requirement I think they should give the option to use a drive or a stick. I'd rather have it on a small drive. Most people go with truenas cause it's free.

[@gerhard1702]

Thanks for your content!

[@christianlempa]

Thanks for watching!

[@EmperorTerran]

OMV vs truenas would better fit my personal interest.. i aint paying for unraid anyway, so its not on the list for me

[@lukcicPL]

Regarding OS installed on USB drive, I was also very sceptical… unitil my ESXI server at work hit 1400 days uptime. I had to turn it off to change SAS controlling battery 🥲

[@rumplin]

I wish TrueNAS had a better interface for the VMs. Like I have no idea which VM uses the most resources and how much resources. Also the interface lacks few settings and validations (like gpu already assigned, when it's not?),

[@matuopm]

its a clear win for unraid in my opinion. feels much more versatile and easier to setup. unraids only flaw in my opinion is: its not free

[@DikkerSickBrickTV]

TrueNAS is overkill for average home nas, with basic media storage and 10 docker containers. Unraid is not cheap. OMV suits best, one time setup, do whatever u want, or just dont touch it.

[@dansanger5340]

And, the answer is... Debian server.

[@Darkk6969]

Very cool video on the comparisons. I am planning on to upgrade my TrueNAS Core over to Scale. Just have to deal with the legacy encryption as it won't upgrade properly since it uses different encryption scheme from FreeBSD to Debian. I believe there is a way to remove the encryption without losing data. Have to research it.

[@christianlempa]

Thank you! :)

[@jacevedo770]

This is your best video!

[@christianlempa]

Glad you think so!

[@JulianWundrak]

I'm not experienced with boith of the oses, but why is k8 not "better for development" and docker-compose should be preferred? In the end, the images are the sames, but redeploy can take some time, if you have good health-checks. In Swarm, this would be some like equal, but I don't understand your "pro-argument". In the end: if you want clustering, you will have a node for this. Nas should be the a vm with dedicated controller or system. But only my thoughts

[@KCkohler]

Ubiquity UNAS pro > everything else

[@a51alias]

No 3rd party apps = nope or not yet

[@SE-161]

👇TrueNAS #1

[@Silverone_]

0:01 Ubuntu server with a good hypervisor (ie: Docker, proxmox, etc.)

[@GerardoGTapia]

its easy, unraid for home, truenas for enterprise

[@elminster8149]

TrueNAS Scale is perfectly reliable.🙄

[@onedot6674]

OMV has been working well for my use case.

[@jacevedo770]

Thanks!

[@christianlempa]

Thank you so much for your support! :)

[@Radulf666]

I use my TrueNas Scale also on a USB-Drive because its most depending on RAM it runs really well. OK, it's a USB on the Mainbord so maybe it's a bit different from an external USB, but i don't think so? What am I missing that he says it's not possible?

[@andreas.grundler]

You can do this, but True NAS does a lot of read/write operations on the system drive. The log, for example. USB sticks are not as durable as SSDs or HDDs in this respect. What you can do is put a small NVME in a USB enclosure and install the system on it.

[@eljodinkaki3018]

What kept me away from Truenas is that a USB Zigbee Dongle (Homeassistant) cannot be integrated. I haven't found anything useful about this problem in any Forum. Perhaps yes, using tricks and detours

[@anakin-solo]

Why not using a Zigbee to Ethernet Gateway like the SMLIGHT SLZB-06? I heard a lot of positive things about it

[@robertodepetro1996]

Truenas core so underrated...

[@DavidChad]

Good video, thank you!

[@christianlempa]

Glad you liked it!

[@andrerohrbach3566]

Proxmox + virtualized TrueNAS

[@JokingChickenn]

The way to go for sure! Maybe they will improve kvm integration so we don’t need proxmox? Proxmox will always be better tho

[@Wan_s]

What are you running in your proxmox server ? (Except TrueNAS), I'm asking to know what infra I should use

[@maxmustermann194]

There is zero official support for that, never use it in production. For testing it's fine.

[@Coffeelosopher]

Why is he holding two save icons in the Thumbnail?

[@AnthonyPerot]

What annoys me is that there’s no way to provision iscsi shares via terraform with Truenas

[@AnthonyPerot]

And they’re dropping their REST api for a websockets based api using a client, which means that we need to offload to an external provider using the Python or golang client.

[@benedicteich8697]

Auf meinem 24/7 Server läuft Unraid, auf meinem Backup-Server TrueNAS Scale und auf meinem VM-Server läuft proxmox.

[@MadChristianX]

I thought all tech youtubers will show the new unifi ProNAS :D

[@christianlempa]

Nope, I’m not so interested in product marketing 😂

[@rhb.digital]

will never use UnRaid as long you cant install

[@1xXNimrodXx1]

TruenasScale - if Xpenology(DSM bootloader) had better RAM caching for faster transfer speeds and support for AMD GPU I would have stuck to the DSM bootloader.

[@peterge98]

Truenas

[@vzetanet]

Truenas ha solo un problema, per ogni nuova versione hanno fatto serie modifiche, l'ultima di fatto è l'abbandono di kubernetes, mi sono sempre sentito di usare un sistema perennemente in beta. Detto ciò comunque è giusta l'affermazione che si sceglie il sistema in base all'uso. Di truenas apprezzo la solidità del sistema anche lato SO.

[@satamototo]

Rockstor and OMV.

[@nfinzer22]

IIRC unraid isn’t free so it’s off the table to me

[@LampJustin]

I think both options are terrible, I hand roll my own ceph.... Just kidding, although I just did the latter 😅😂

[@TinyWorkshop]

I cannot withstand booting from an usb key......

[@V1N_574]

Unraid to the bone!

[@cl4vi5]

TrueNAS

[@pablojefcobar]

Well none of them are perfect and in my opinion you can build a near perfect one yourself… If you’re a bit tech-savvy. You should setup a debian system with Snapraid, Snapraid-btrfs, Mergerfs and Samba

[@Netist_]

Agreed. Went looking through the comments and was surprised it took me so long to find a comment like this. IMO there's very little excuse not to do it yourself. If you're really so inept that you need a fancy UI to do basic tasks like configuring disk arrays or network shares, you really don't have any business running a NAS in the first place. Go buy a Synology or something.

[@johnevans6451]

I like your channel however this video was a bit of a disappointment. I was expecting to see performance NAS comparison on same hardware. Not the general comments describing the two systems. I would also like to point that the virtualization part is where unraid shines. It was the OS used by Linus in the 7 PCs in one, back in the days. I also used it to give my father a NAS and windows PC with a pass through GPU and USB card, so that he would have the best of both worlds. I myself am however a FreeNAs/TrueNAS scale user for many years, as I just want my NAS to work and be stable as long as possible. Hope to see a more in depth dive, specifically as I never played with the ZFS implementation of unraid. Hope you take this in a positive way.

[@colinschi]

Whats about openmediavault for those who do not need apps or virtualization?

[@christianlempa]

Good question, I never looked at it tbh

[@colinschi]

@@christianlempa Currently I‘m setting up my proxmox based home server. So in my case i do not need this stuff. I only need nas features and no overhead :) I found out that there is a lxc helper script for omv. I‘ll try that.

[@rogerkrush]

ceph

[@marconwps]

Truenas open source and free ;)!!

[@will1122]

unraid needing the OS to be on a usb drive is a complete deal breaker for me, to relay on a usb drive for your OS is just insane to me. just let me use a ssd or nvme like normal I'm not having a usb drive hanging out the back of my device. the licensing to the usb and not the MB is just silly too.

[@maxmustermann194]

@@will1122 It's a hobbyist playground. Never will be for enterprise or serious production use. That's why I rely on TrueNAS Scale for my home NAS solution.

[@b0ne91]

It's only loaded at boot time. The entire OS runs in RAM. You can run all your appdata on an NVMe pool, as pretty much everyone does. I was also super wary of it. The license is really tied to your account, meaning you *can* switch USB drives. You just, ideally, shouldn't completely lose an old drive. But even if you did, migrating to a new one is fine.

[@cam_934]

Its a deal breaker because I don't think you don't understand it. For starters the USB drive can be connected to an internal USB header so its not sticking out the back and the OS runs in RAM once booted. This means you can backup the Boot OS USB drive on a schedule and even over the internet to Unraid Connect, you can also schedule a backup of your appdata folder. Out of interest can you simple make daily backups of your TrueNas Boot drive (On Unraid that's approx. 500mb zipped), it can also schedule a backup your appdata folder. Migrating Unraid to another system is also simple.

[@Netist_]

I don't really understand the NAS OS meme. They both suck. Pick whatever linux distro you want, set up a disk array, set up some network shares. It's really not that difficult.