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Member 13301679 wrote: In my experience, I appreciate software that warns me about using a mechanism that will lose my data.
Will, vs could.
You have to put things into context. Do you want to be c*ckblocked altogether, or be warned about something that might happen but then decide for yourself whether something's worth the risk to you or not?
I prefer the latter. I understand not everyone would.
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I worked for a company that used Microsoft for all its servers and workstations(5000+). During this time I played with SUSE and Ubuntu at home. After retiring and Microsoft non-support for machines that were only a few years old, I decided to move over to Ubuntu for all my home. Currently running 8 server and 3 desktop machines. I even run Dotnet8 on Linux. Other than TurboTax, I have no need for Windows. I have only occasionally had an issue but usually it my own fault for a miss-configuration. I have had no issues with hardware or software, in fact keeping things up-to-date is much easier than with Window(less reboots). My current desktop took about 50 - 60 seconds to get login and another 30 after login to being able to use it with windows. On Ubuntu, the boot is about 30 second and after login I can start using almost immediately(finish loading background tasks in 20 seconds).
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It is not Linux which is disappointing, it is TrueNAS. Every now and then "user friendly" or "improved" implementations of tit or tat surface. And yes, THOSE are disappointing.
I am not even talking about TrueNAS, but for example Synology NAS which might or might not use a TrueNAS derivative. Their implementation is crappy, limited and fault INtolerant. Still it is Linux.
The plain vanilla Linux mdadm however is reliable, versatile, resilient, fault-tolerant en indestructible. Quite a few years ago I was experimenting with disaster recovery on Linux mdadm RAID. It took me an insane amount of effort to destroy the RAID so it was impossible to re-assemble.
The lesson: it is not Linux which is disappointing, it is the n-th order derivative which tried to "improve" on functionality or safety.
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Johannes Linkels wrote: The lesson: it is not Linux which is disappointing, it is the n-th order derivative which tried to "improve" on functionality or safety.
I can't disagree with that.
My point was, I was looking forward to dedicating a machine to using Linux for a specific task. TrueNAS is very well regarded in the community. Yet it fell short enough that it put the kibosh on that project.
Obviously Linux != TrueNAS. But to me it still came across as another missed opportunity.
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I understand. And you are right in expecting better performance. Unfortunately people are lured into using one of those specialized distros because it is "easier". Well, maybe it is for the unprepared user. I am running everything for which is a special distro on a general purpose Debian server. And true, I don't have fancy web interfaces.
The problem with reviews or comments is mostly that most products are easy to use, beautiful and perform very well as long as nothing goes wrong. The quality is in the solution is when you are able to recover from a seemingly total disaster. No one ever reviews that, if you are lucky someone posts such a recovery when it happened and if possible.
I don't want to land in a Windows-vs-Linux discussion, but Windows and Microsoft products are an order of magnitude more powerful, beautiful and easier to use. Until something goes wrong and then there are exactly zero recovery options except re-install and restore. All Linux solutions working toward a better (as in easier) experience run the risk of moving into that direction.
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I like to just share my Linux experience.
Since my "system" has been steadily growing as far as shear quantity of drives due to my opinion "if it is not used why bother to delete it " one of my experiments is to play with RAID. I do realize that its purpose is to build a "backup" just in case of hardware FAILURE. With that said - I have lost access to fully functioning RAID FOUR times! Not due to hardware failure - Linux just refuses to keep my RAID functioning !
My next opinion is about how Linux, and Ubuntu specifically, handles Bluetooth... or it actually does not care about Bluetooth - in my opinion.
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I've toyed around with RAID (both software and hardware) many times over the decades, and I finally swore off of it many years ago, when the hardware controller on my MB died.
I decided to give it another go with TrueNAS.
After this experience, I'm still sticking with the conclusion I had already drawn years ago - to do it right, RAID is expensive. RAID stands of Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks. Yeah, the disks are cheap, I have plenty. But the infrastructure around it is expensive, if you need it to be reliable. QNAS, Drobo, Synology - I have a hard time justifying the sort of money they want as a home user.
I was under the mistaken impression that you could throw just about anything at TrueNAS, and it would just make it work. Not even close.
That was my big disapointment.
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When one has thousands of possible hardware choices and thus the possible combinations can reach unimaginable numbers the reality is that things will not always work.
Rather surprising that there are not more failures.
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jschell wrote: Rather surprising that there are not more failures.
How could there have been? I was blocked right from the get-go. I only wished its inherent limitations would've been made more clearly. Like I said, I thought I had done my homework and the community at large is raving about TrueNAS.
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My experience with TrueNAS has been absolutely fantastic. I've worked with various Linux distros over the years, but TrueNAS almost hides that part of its DNA from you.
I built a NAS system several years ago, installed FreeNAS and four 3TB drives as well as a small SSD as the boot drive. Installed the software, booted it up, and was almost immediately in production. No muss, no fuss. Set the drives into a ZPool with parity, created Windows shares, started throwing files at it. Rock solid.
When the system started filling up, I started to replace the 3TB drives with 8TB versions. Took a drive off-line, physically swapped it out for an 8TB, told FreeNAS to re-silver. Array re-built, no errors. Rinse, repeat, three times. One of the beauties of FreeNAS/TrueNAs is that when the capacity of the drives in the array changes, it will automatically re-size the array after the last drive has been replaced. Again, no magical incantations needed, no chicken entrails at midnight. I upgraded from FreeNAS to TrueNAS efortlessly.
One day, the system would not boot. I don't know if it was the CPU, memory, or the motherboard, but it was completely toast. Fearing the worst, I built a new base platform, and hooked up my drives. Re-installed TrueNAS on a new SSD, loaded the last configuration backup, and bang -- all my shares, permissions, accounts, etc. were back, as if there had been no interruptions.
On a final note, I actually have two USB drives attached to the box. These are 8TB Western Digital MyBook units. They are configured as software RAID 1 (mirrored). I use them to store digital video files (no, not porn, but movies and TV series) to feed my entertainment system.
While I don't use Linux as my daily desktop, I do highly recommend TrueNAS. My main desktop is Windows, mainly because I am a Windows developer, but I do run several Linux VMs on my network for various purposes (like ISPConfig, Postfix/ClamAV/SpamAssassin).
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Your experience is exactly the sort of thing I was hoping for.
My expectation was that it'd be fine with bunch of drives in a multi-drive enclosure connecting back to the PC over USB-C. It sounded simple enough in my mind...
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There are a couple of things that I think need some clarification. First is that you may be mistaking Windows' willingness/ability to accept whatever drives you want to throw at it as an endorsement that what you're doing is a good idea and will perform well (both speed-wise and data integrity-wise). IMHO, that's an incorrect assumption. TrueNAS will do what you want it to do but it will not endorse it as a good idea (from a data-integrity and performance POV) because it's not. People use TrueNAS for its performance, stability, data-integrity and the UI on top of it which makes it really easy to create a reliable setup. If TrueNAS isn't letting you do something easily, that should be a sign that what you're doing isn't a good idea for a super stable, reliable and performant system. In that light, it's more of a guardrail that is intended to give you pause before hopping over it.
I think Unraid might be more of what you're looking for. One of its strengths and key selling points is that it will take whatever disks you throw at it and add them to your storage. It's also got a nice UI that makes things pretty easy to do. As long as you understand that throwing whatever kind of disks you want into your storage pool without concern for their age, quality, storage capacity, etc. is generally not going to be as reliable from a data-integrity standpoint as what you would get with better drives of matching storage capacity you'll be fine. For many use cases, that's sufficient. As long as you make sure that anything that you absolutely can't lose is backed up you should be good.
The second thing that I think needs some clarification is that TrueNAS (or FreeNAS as it used to be called) isn't Linux. It is based on FreeBSD (a Unix flavor). While both Unix and Linux support the Posix standard, they are separate operating systems with different capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. BTW, Unraid is based on Linux (specifically the Slackware distro).
The fact that there are a ton of different Linux distros can definitely be overwhelming; it was for me when I first got started. However, I've come to view it more as giving me the ability to evaluate different things and pick the best tool for the job. I'm not stuck with taking a "jack of all trades" approach like Windows often takes. I use both Linux and Windows as daily drivers both on bare metal and VM. Both are stable and performant. It's taken me more time to read and learn about the various Linux distros but it has paid off big time in stability and being able to tailor an optimized solution for whatever computing problem I need to solve.
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Ummm with all due respect... TrueNAS is not based on GNU/Linux. It's based on FreeBSD. Different systems and different kernels, different drivers and so on. So even if it is an open source project... it's not a GNU/Linux distro. Therefore GNU/Linux did not disappoint you yet.
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Saw an article this morning recommending that you run the command: "Defrag C:" from time to time on your SSD drives. But does it make sense to defrag a SSD? I can understand that it is of value on old spinning disk hard drives, where fragmentation can cause the reader to physically jump from fragment to fragment, but a SSD has no moving parts.
What do the experts say?
Ok, I have had my coffee, so you can all come out now!
modified yesterday.
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No - all it will do is 'burning' write cycles, which shortens the life of the drive
"If builders built buildings the way programmers wrote programs, then the first woodpecker that came along would destroy civilization." ― Gerald Weinberg
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This is a well-known and probably correct argument.
On the other hand, the question I have is: If SSDs use something like DMA, could a certain kind of defragmentation increase throughput?
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Agreed.
Steve Gibson (author of Spin-Rite) has discussed this numerous times on his Security Now podcast, and it makes zero sense to "defrag" an SSD.
Some people have called him a quack, and I originally sided with them (somewhat), but after listening to his podcast for nearly a decade, it's clear he's technical to an extreme and very knowledgeable. When he does a deep dive into some technical matter, I think he always makes a lot of sense. He's not clickbait-y and doesn't make outrageous claims.
Not that I had any doubt, when it comes to defragging an SSD. But his explanation for it (I don't have a show number for it, sorry) just sealed the deal for me.
modified yesterday.
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dandy72 wrote: Some people have called him a quack
dandy72 wrote: it's clear he's technical to an extreme and very knowledgeable
You can be both you know. 
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Fair point. But I've been listening to his podcast for over a decade, and I have come to the conclusion that those who called him a quack were just poorly informed.
I forget what his exact concern was (something about XP's default network configuration?), but in the end he was proven right and Microsoft eventually had to seriously lock it down with SP2, which introduced (for the first time) the Windows firewall.
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I remember him alright.
He isn't a quack, but has a tendency to fight windmills. 
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Does a "defrag" use less space? Are there fewer "pointers" to follow? How much can you "save" in extreme cases? Is space a concern on a "maxed out" SSD?
"Before entering on an understanding, I have meditated for a long time, and have foreseen what might happen. It is not genius which reveals to me suddenly, secretly, what I have to say or to do in a circumstance unexpected by other people; it is reflection, it is meditation." - Napoleon I
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Gerry Schmitz wrote: Is space a concern on a "maxed out" SSD?
Is space not a concern on any maxed out drive, no matter what the underlying technology might be?
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Defragging an SSD makes no sense, but trimming does.
SSD TRIM is an ATA command that enables an operating system to inform an SSD drive which data blocks it can erase because they are no longer in use. The use of TRIM can improve the performance of writing data to SSDs and contribute to longer SSD life. This is an expensive operation, which is why it isn't performed after every time a block is released.
See this explanation by Kingston Technology, a RAM and SSD drive manufacturer: The Importance of Garbage Collection and TRIM Processes for SSD Performance
Freedom is the freedom to say that two plus two make four. If that is granted, all else follows.
-- 6079 Smith W.
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I respectfully disagree. Windows recognizes that your drive is an SSD and doesn't do it. Instead, there are other optimizations that Windows does to SSDs that are good to keep it working well. From my reading and understanding over the years, defragmenting, however, does nothing at all to an SSD drive except needlessly burn read/write cycles. If you know of information supporting your viewpoint, I'd love to read about it.
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