Very new to self hosting and truenas.

Got an old dell with 6x4tb of storage. Turns out they are all SAS drives and turns out hardware raid is the old thing now. Knowing none of this before what can I do with SAS drives connecting to my raid card (in photo) knowing that this is just a home NAS, SAS drives are more expensive and better to just go SATA.

What do you think?

Get a pcie to data, sell all the SAS drives and save up for 6x4tb of Seagate data drives?

What would you do with a dell server with old SAS drives if the end goal was a dependable home NAS for important home files?

I’m new to this so any input helps, thanks!

  • mkoEnglish
    2·
    2 hours ago

    Without knowing what ypu plan is in detail, here’s one example of a plan for a NAS…

    • Flash your SAS card or get an LSI card you can flash to IT mode.
    • Install TrueNAS Scale and set up your ZFS volume with your existing SAS drives
    • If any drive fails, exchange it for a SATA with at least the same size and re-silver.

    You wouldn’t need to exchange all of them at the same time as long as the one you are swapping in can hold all the blocks the old one did.