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🗄️ Free NAS Setup

Free NAS Setup with TrueNAS on an Old PC

TrueNAS software costs exactly zero. This guide walks the whole build on an old PC - install, storage pool, shared folders, users and snapshots - and states the real bill honestly: the drives you put in, the electricity it sips all day, and one backup copy that must live outside the NAS.

✍️ Technical Anshu🖥️ TrueNAS on an Old PC⏱️ One evening setup
🎥 Watch the full video - the complete setup, step by step

A NAS is just a computer whose only job is holding files for the whole house or office - and the expensive part was never the software. TrueNAS is free, and an old PC you already own is a perfectly good home for it. Below is the complete path, in the order that works: what free honestly covers, the install, the storage pool, shared folders everyone can open, proper user accounts, and the snapshots that act as an undo button. The companion video above shows the same build on screen.

TrueNAS - Dashboard (example)
Hostname ............ truenas Pool "tank" ......... ONLINE - 2 drives, mirror Used ................ 38 percent Alerts .............. None - all clear SMB shares .......... Media, Documents, Backups

Example dashboard of a finished build - a healthy pool, shares served, no alerts.

1

What Free Honestly Covers - and What It Does Not

TrueNAS Community Edition is free software - no licence, no subscription for the NAS features in this guide. But free software still runs on physical things, so count the real costs once, before you start:

  1. Drives - the storage itself. Two decent hard drives are the one purchase that matters.
  2. Electricity - a NAS runs day and night. An efficient old PC costs little; a thirsty gaming rig costs noticeably more. Measure it, do not guess.
  3. Your time - one evening to build, a few minutes a month to look after.

Everything else in this page - pools, shares, users, snapshots - is included in the free software.

2

Install TrueNAS on a Small Boot SSD

Write the TrueNAS installer to a pen drive, boot the old PC from it, and install onto a small SSD kept only for the system. Your storage drives stay separate, so the system disk can be replaced without touching your data.

  1. Boot from the installer pen drive and choose Install
  2. Select the small SSD as the boot drive - not a storage drive
  3. Set a strong password for the admin account and write it down somewhere safe, offline
  4. Restart, and note the IP address shown on the screen - the web interface lives there, for example http://192.168.1.50

Honest note from experience: a pen drive makes a poor permanent boot disk - they wear out quietly. A cheap small SSD is the right home for the system.

3

Create the Storage Pool - the Foundation

Open the web interface, go to Storage and create a pool from your storage drives. With two drives, choose a mirror: both drives hold the same data, so one can die and nothing is lost. With three or more, RAIDZ1 spreads data with one drive of safety.

  1. Storage → Create Pool → give it a simple name, for example tank
  2. Add the drives and choose Mirror (two drives) or RAIDZ1 (three or more)
  3. Confirm - this erases those drives, so double-check you picked the right ones

Take your time here. The pool layout is the one decision that is painful to change later.

4

Datasets and SMB Shares the Whole House Can Open

Inside the pool, make one dataset per job - Media, Documents, Backups - then share each over SMB so Windows and Mac treat it like a normal folder.

  1. Storage → your pool → Add Dataset for each folder you need
  2. Sharing → Windows Shares (SMB) → Add, point it at the dataset
  3. Make sure the SMB service is on under Services, and set it to start automatically
  4. On a Windows PC, open File Explorer and type \\192.168.1.50\Media in the address bar - use your NAS address and share name
5

One User Account per Person - Never Share the Admin Login

The admin account is for managing the NAS, not for daily file access. Create a separate user for each person under Credentials → Users, set who can open which share, and test every login from a second device before you move real data in.

  1. Create the users with their own passwords
  2. On each dataset, set permissions: who can read, who can write, who sees nothing
  3. Sign in as each user once and confirm they see exactly their folders - no more
6

Turn On Snapshots - the Undo Button

Snapshots are TrueNAS quietly saving the state of a folder at set times. A deleted file, a wrong edit, even an encrypted-by-malware folder can be rolled back to yesterday in minutes.

  1. Data Protection → Periodic Snapshot Tasks → Add
  2. Pick the datasets that change often, schedule daily (hourly for busy office folders)
  3. Set a sensible lifetime - two to four weeks is a good home starting point

Snapshots cost only the space of what changed. For a family NAS they are the single feature that saves the most tears.

🔴 A NAS is not a backup. A mirror protects you when a drive dies - it does nothing when a file is deleted, a folder is encrypted by ransomware, or the box itself is stolen. Keep at least one copy of your important data outside this machine: an external drive stored elsewhere, or the cloud. The NAS is the convenient home of your files, not their only home.

🎥 Watch the Complete Video

Every step shown live on screen - installation, pools, shares and the settings that matter.

▶️ Watch Full Video
❓ Common Questions (FAQ)

Is TrueNAS really free, or is there a subscription later?

The Community Edition used in this guide is free - pools, shares, users and snapshots are not locked behind a subscription. The company behind it sells business systems and support, which is how the free edition exists. Your real costs are the drives and the electricity, both counted honestly in this guide.

How much RAM does an old PC need for TrueNAS?

8 GB is the practical minimum and 16 GB makes it comfortable. TrueNAS uses spare RAM as its read cache, so more RAM mainly means faster repeated access. Fancy error-correcting memory is nice to have for a home build, not a requirement.

Can I start with a single hard drive?

You can, and for learning it is fine. But a single drive means the day it dies, everything on it is gone - no mirror, no safety. If the data matters, start with two drives of the same size in a mirror, and still keep a separate backup copy outside the NAS.

This guide is based on the Technical Anshu video linked above • Stuck on a step? Ask in the video comments - you will get an answer there 🙏