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Hello, I have always wanted to build my own NAS, but had never had the time to invest nor did i have time to invest in the proper amount of drive space i ideally wanted. HexOS, introduced by Linuses video on black friday, had that easy "make any hardware a NAS with easy setup" pitch that finally got me to pull the trigger. Overall Im happy that i did. The Hardware Drives: Pool is 5x WD Ultrastar 12TB and 2x 500g WD red m.2 in redundancy for HexOS CPU: 12900k RAM: 32GB DDR5 6000hz Case: JONSBO N5 NAS - Couldn't recommend this case enough for anyone that didnt want rack mounted, but wanted endless hardware options while also having a plethora of drive space. Motherboard: ASUS ROG Maximus Z690 Hero The Install The installation/setup of HexOS was as simple and easy as advertised. Right down to it also asking if i wanted to use my second m.2 for redundancy. I didnt need to do anything with the hardware out of the box. HexOS recognized everything i had connected with ease. First 48 hours After the first two days i had setup my pool and several network shares. I then started to transfer around 25tb worth of data congregated between four sources. I then setup those shares as network drives on the needed devices. This is where my HexOS journey ended and embarked upon my journey of TrueNAS began. HexOS This is where i end my blog post and review of HexOS. For my use with its current capability this was perfect for me. An easy no BS install process with a nice web interface that i like to peek at time to time. Im excited to see what is in store over the long haul. Iv had to keep myself in check with hoping for some updates or abilities to test out. The fact it got me into TrueNAS and helped me setup the home server iv always wanted made my purchase worth it. TrueNAS What a flippin good tool. Iv done quite a bit and still learning. So far iv completed my Plex server migration with associated apps and it is flawless. (after a fairly lengthy few days of proper setup) Iv also setup my server 2022 test environment. This allowed me to remove my older W10 box that had two span drives as a "server". While it took a decent amount of time and i can easily see where anyone that isnt an IT professional (admittedly i even had some issues with some parts) TrueNAS is just simply amazing to me. Some of the bigger steps i took to achieve my setup: NIC work to allow my Windows 2022 server to access shares Codec Missing/Transcoding issues for Plex How to setup proper user/role access for all of the plex associated apps to work. I used a lot of forum posts and videos on YouTube. Now that im on 34 days 7 hours 29 minutes of continuous use of my new setup it feels very stout. Being able to backup devices and access files effectively from multiple units, run plex, and run my test server from one box feels good. I have two side hustle businesses in my wifes photography/Drone and my future CNC wood working and being able to work on projects out of this server is so so nice. What im looking forward to getting setup now are Replication and Snapshots configured for select file shares. Im also looking forward to new HexOS features that are not in TrueNAS. The buddy system sounds awesome and my use case for managing my fathers company from an IT prospective would be awesome to extend that type of access for backup sake. Thanks HexOS team, Thanks TrueNAS team, and thank you to the communities both orgs hold.

So since HexOs has started I have swapped hardware many times upgrading my system along the way without loosing anything. This includes Motherboard/cpu , HBA, Videocards ect. The one thing that would limit you from what i read on another post is compatibility with the new parts. But if you keep in mind when you set up a new motherboard youll need to make sure its on non secure boot, and if you go from a cpu with onboard graphics to a computer with out youll need to fill these compatibility issues. SO in the short answer you can swap hardware if needed ,

@ubergeek, can you share your experience? You moved HexOs already to a new device.

I also like to beta test. My test setup is ready for it!

They are both great systems. the big difference between the 2 systems are that the second one has 6 sata ports meaning you can plug in 6 hdds and the first had 4. The amount of drives in total that you want might be your deciding factor. However with a HBA card you can always add more drives. You have a pretty large cooler that won't fit many nas cases. Atx sized power supplies also have the same problem. An expensive but totally worth it case would probably be the jonsbo n5 which can fit either system. In general for more budget conscious builds i would recommend the jonsbo n4 but between a new psu and cooler, most of the savings would disappear. The 12600k likely will use less power than your 12700k which is pretty important for a nas. One more thing of note, you only need a very small boot drive for hexos, all extra space in the boot drive is unusable. It might be considering getting a small one just for that purpose.

After doing some research I came across this forum. Just adding them in the Devices section got mine working.