Editorial desk
TrueNASGuide Editorial
The editorial desk that publishes TrueNASGuide. It is a byline for the site's editorial process, not a person, and this page carries no author biography because there is no individual author to describe.
How this desk works
- Articles are researched from primary sources: vendor and project documentation, published standards and specifications, release notes, advisories, and measurements published by the people who took them.
- Drafts are produced with AI assistance and then edited against those same sources before publication.
- Nothing published here claims hands-on lab testing, benchmarking, or first-hand measurement. Where a figure comes from a datasheet or someone else's test, the article names the source.
- Corrections go to hello@truenasguide.com and are made on the affected page. Funding is set out on the disclosure page.
Posts (23)
- Guides
How to Migrate from TrueNAS CORE to SCALE Safely
Migrate TrueNAS CORE to SCALE with verified backups, the supported upgrade path, configuration restore, and checks for encryption, shares, and apps.
- hardware
Best CPU for TrueNAS SCALE 2026
Compare the best CPUs for TrueNAS SCALE in 2026 across file serving, Jellyfin transcoding, ECC support, virtual machines, and idle power.
- zfs-fundamentals
RAIDZ1 vs RAIDZ2: Parity, Resilver Risk, and Which to Pick
RAIDZ1 survives one disk failure, RAIDZ2 survives two. What that means for usable capacity, resilver risk, and how to choose at each vdev width.
- getting-started
TrueNAS Community Edition vs SCALE: What Changed
TrueNAS Community Edition and TrueNAS SCALE are the same product under two names. What the rename changed, what it did not, and which version to install.
- hardware
TrueNAS RAM Requirements by Workload
TrueNAS RAM sizing for file sharing, apps, VMs, iSCSI, directory services, L2ARC, and deduplication, based on official workload guidance.
- hardware
Best Hard Drives for TrueNAS NAS in 2026
The best hard drives for TrueNAS NAS must be CMR, not SMR — ZFS will punish the wrong choice. Here are the top picks by workload, budget, and bay count.
- hardware
Best Budget NAS Build for Home: What Actually Works in 2026
A practical guide to the best budget NAS build for home use: Intel N100 platforms, ZFS-compatible drives, TrueNAS SCALE setup, and the backup plan.
- getting-started
How to Set Up TrueNAS SCALE: From Bare Metal to First Share
A practical step-by-step guide on how to set up TrueNAS SCALE — hardware, installation, pool creation with RAIDZ, datasets, SMB shares, and backups.
- getting-started
Unraid vs TrueNAS for Media: Flexibility or ZFS Integrity
TrueNAS adds checksums and costs nothing; Unraid accepts mixed drives and needs less RAM. Compare Plex, Jellyfin, apps, storage growth and licensing.
- storage-planning
How to Expand a TrueNAS Pool: 3 ZFS Options
Add a full vdev, replace every drive with larger disks, or widen RAIDZ one disk at a time on OpenZFS 2.3+. Compare bay, budget and parity trade-offs.
- troubleshooting
TrueNAS Degraded Pool: How to Replace a Failed Disk
Identify the failed drive by serial, confirm it with SMART, install an equal-or-larger CMR disk, resilver, and verify the pool returns to ONLINE.
- troubleshooting
TrueNAS Pool Won't Import? 5 zpool Fixes That Work
TrueNAS pool won't import, or I/O is suspended? Decode UNAVAIL, FAULTED and DEGRADED, fix missing devices, and import read-only to rescue your data.
- getting-started
TrueNAS SCALE vs Unraid vs OMV 2026: 5 Factors Compared
TrueNAS SCALE, Unraid and OpenMediaVault compared on filesystem, expansion, apps, hardware and cost, with a clear pick for each type of home NAS build.
- sharing
iSCSI vs NFS vs SMB on TrueNAS: The File vs Block Rule
SMB, NFS or iSCSI on TrueNAS? The file-versus-block rule that decides it, which clients suit each protocol, and the honest performance differences.
- data-protection
TrueNAS Scrub: What It Does and How Often to Run It
A scrub reads all used blocks, verifies checksums and repairs bad data from redundancy. Run it every two weeks or monthly, plus SMART short and long tests.
- zfs-fundamentals
TrueNAS Zvol vs Dataset: Block vs File Storage
Use a TrueNAS dataset for SMB, NFS and app files; use a zvol for iSCSI or a VM's raw disk. Compare recordsize, volblocksize and snapshots.
- hardware
TrueNAS System Requirements: Minimum & Recommended
TrueNAS needs a 64-bit 2-core CPU, 8 GB RAM, a 16 GB boot SSD and two data drives. Compare the official minimum with practical home NAS targets.
- applications
TrueNAS SCALE Docker Apps: Setup, Storage, and Jellyfin
Learn how SCALE's Docker app system works, which datasets to create first, and how to install Jellyfin with host paths, ports and read-only media mounts.
- getting-started
TrueNAS SCALE vs CORE in 2026: Which Should You Use?
TrueNAS SCALE is the active Linux platform; CORE's final release was in 2025. Compare apps, VMs, hardware support, pool portability and migration.
- sharing
How to Set Up a TrueNAS SMB Share: Users, ACLs & Apps
Create a TrueNAS SMB share step by step: make a dataset and user, set NFSv4 ACLs, start SMB, connect clients and avoid the apps-dataset error.
- data-protection
TrueNAS Snapshot and Replication Strategy
Snapshots protect against accidents. Replication protects against fires. Here is a practical TrueNAS snapshot schedule and replication setup for a home.
- zfs-fundamentals
ZFS Performance Tuning: ARC, Recordsize & Compression
Learn when ARC size, dataset recordsize and compression affect ZFS performance, which settings fit common workloads, and what to leave at defaults.
- zfs-fundamentals
ZFS RAIDZ vs Mirror: Capacity, IOPS, and Resilver Risk
Choose 6- to 8-wide RAIDZ2 for media and bulk storage, or two-way mirrors for VMs and databases. Compare usable capacity, fault tolerance and growth.