Building Your Own NAS with TrueNAS Scale: A Step-by-Step Guide

In today’s digital age, managing and storing your data securely has become a priority. Whether you’re looking to create a personal cloud, set up a media server, or simply have a safe place to store and share files, building your own Network Attached Storage (NAS) system can be the perfect solution. And in this guide, I’ll show you how to do just that using TrueNAS Scale—an open-source operating system designed for NAS solutions.

If you’ve ever wanted to store your data securely, share files across your network, or even access your files remotely, this guide will help you set everything up with ease. Let’s dive right in!

Step 1: Gathering the Necessary Hardware

Before we begin, let’s talk about the hardware you’ll need to get your NAS up and running.

What You’ll Need:

1. A Computer or Server: Ideally, you’ll need a computer or server with multiple drive bays. If you don’t have a dedicated NAS enclosure, you can repurpose an old computer, but make sure it has enough SATA ports for your storage drives.
2. Storage Drives: You’ll need multiple SSDs or HDDs to store your data. Depending on your needs, you can choose between SSDs for speed or HDDs for larger storage capacity.
3. USB Drive (8GB or more): This is needed to create a bootable drive for TrueNAS Scale.
4. Stable Internet Connection: For software downloads and remote access.

Once you have your hardware ready, we can proceed to the installation phase.

Step 2: Installing TrueNAS Scale

Downloading TrueNAS Scale

Head over to the TrueNAS website and download the latest ISO file for TrueNAS Scale. This operating system is open-source and designed to provide flexible, powerful NAS solutions for both beginners and advanced users.

Creating a Bootable USB Drive

Now, we need to create a bootable USB drive to install TrueNAS Scale. We’ll use Balena Etcher for this:

1. Download and install Balena Etcher on your computer.
2. Insert your USB drive into your PC.
3. Open Balena Etcher, click on Flash from file, and select the TrueNAS Scale ISO file you downloaded earlier.
4. Click Select Target and choose your USB drive.
5. Hit Flash and wait for the process to complete. Once it’s done, your bootable USB is ready.

Installing TrueNAS Scale

Now, let’s boot your NAS system from the USB drive:

1. Insert the bootable USB drive into your computer or NAS and power it on.
2. Access the BIOS/UEFI settings by pressing the appropriate key (usually F2, F10, or Delete).
3. In the BIOS settings, make sure the USB drive is set as the primary boot option.
4. Enable Virtualization in your CPU settings if it’s not already enabled.
5. Save the changes and reboot the system.

Now your computer will boot into the TrueNAS Scale installer. Follow the instructions to:

• Select the drive where you want to install TrueNAS Scale.
• Set up an admin user and password.
• Once installed, unplug the USB drive and restart the system.

Upon restart, TrueNAS will boot into the Command Line Interface (CLI), where it will display an IP address. This IP address will allow you to access the TrueNAS web UI from another computer.

Step 3: Accessing the TrueNAS Web Interface

1. Open a web browser on another device within the same network and type in the IP address from the TrueNAS CLI.
2. When prompted, enter the admin username and password you set earlier to log in.

Once logged in, you’ll be in the TrueNAS web interface, where we can set up storage, sharing protocols, and more.

Step 4: Setting Up Your Storage Pool

Now that you’re inside TrueNAS Scale, let’s create a storage pool to store your data:

1. Go to the Storage tab and click on Create Pool.
2. Enter a name for your pool and select the layout that fits your needs. Since I have only one drive, I’m using Stripe. However, if you have multiple drives, you can choose Mirror or various RAID configurations for better redundancy and performance.
3. Choose the drives to add to the pool and click Next, then click Create Pool to finalize the setup.

Creating a Dataset

Next, you’ll want to create a dataset within the storage pool. This dataset functions like a folder, but with advanced features:

1. Click Add Dataset under your newly created storage pool.
2. Name your dataset and hit Save.

Your NAS system is now ready to store data. However, we need to configure sharing before we can access it from other devices.

Step 5: Configuring File Sharing

For file sharing across your network, we’ll use SMB (Samba), which is compatible with most devices, including Windows, macOS, and Linux.

Creating a User for SMB

1. Go to Credentials > Users, then click Add.
2. Enter the full name, username, and password for the user.
3. Enable the SMB user checkbox to allow the user to access SMB shares.
4. Click Save.

Enabling SMB Share

1. Go to the Shares tab and click Add next to Windows SMB Shares.
2. Select the dataset you created earlier and configure the Access Control List (ACL) permissions.
3. Add a mask entry to set maximum permissions for the user or group.
4. Set user permissions to read, write, and execute.
5. Save the settings.

Now, your NAS is configured for SMB sharing, and you can access it from any device on your local network.

Step 6: Accessing Your NAS on the Local Network

To test if your NAS is accessible on the local network:

1. Open File Explorer on your Windows PC and type the TrueNAS IP address in the address bar.
2. Enter the SMB user credentials you created earlier, and you’ll have access to your shared files.

You can also use an Android or iOS file manager app to access your NAS by adding a network location using the SMB protocol.

Step 7: Accessing Your NAS Over the Internet

For remote access to your NAS, we’ll use TailScale—a secure and easy-to-setup VPN that doesn’t require port forwarding or Dynamic DNS.

Setting Up TailScale

1. Go to the Apps section in TrueNAS Scale and search for TailScale.
2. Install the TailScale app, and choose the storage pool for installation.
3. Visit the TailScale website, log in with your Google account, and generate an authentication key.
4. Copy the key and paste it into the TailScale app configuration on TrueNAS.

After installation, your NAS will be connected to the TailScale network, and you’ll see the TailScale IP address for your NAS.

Connecting from Remote Devices

1. Install the TailScale client on your remote computer or mobile device (available for Windows, macOS, Linux, Android, and iOS).
2. Log in using your TailScale account.
3. Once connected, you can access your NAS using the TailScale IP.

Now you have secure, remote access to your TrueNAS server!

Conclusion: Your Personal NAS Is Ready!

And just like that, you’ve successfully built your own NAS using TrueNAS Scale and made it accessible over the internet using TailScale. Whether you need secure data storage, a media server, or file-sharing across devices, your NAS is now ready to serve your needs.

Thank you for following along, and happy computing! 🌟 If you have any questions or tips, feel free to drop them in the comments below.