HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF - I wish I had more time

[Ioannis]

Dear all,

To start with:

1. I am a noob
2. with limited time available
3. I have functional needs from this NAS
4. I want to learn, a few things
5. Thanks HEXOS team for this project
6. I came here, from LTT!

I bought a second hand an office pc ,HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF. After a few upgrades

• CPU i7-9700 (8-Core)
• 32 GB DDR4-2666
• 256 nvme SSD (already there)
• 2 x new Seagate IronWolf 6 TB, 3.5", CMR
• System cost - PC 250 CHF + 2x drives 296 CHF

I barely have time to spare, but still my target is to learn a few things, built my own NAS and host several other helpfull services.

• I want everything to be local, not accessible online
• For the moment, 6TGB (raid 1), are more than enough
• I got Immich running, which is kind of awesome (local only)
  • I am looking to learn how plex works
  • I am also trying to installed MeTube
• I would need to check in the future the buddy back-up. To be seen.

Problems to solve ahead, and or suggestions/requests I would have form the developers.

1. I cannot connect through my ethernet port. -> mitigation I am using an ethernet to usb adaptor
   • I am currently limited to 100 MBit. I know I should be able to go up to 1 GBit. I am trying to identify the bottleneck.
   • I wish to connect through my motherboard's ethernet port. I am trying to find out why.
2. I have redundancy on my drives, but on the OS/boot drive.
   • I am a noob, and I want to set it and forget it. so I would like to see two things from developers.
     1. ability to use two drives for the OS, or create somehow a recovery disk or something
     2. be able to recover a previously created pool, if I install again the OS

Have fun all!

Kindest regards,
Ioannis

[Ioannis]

Maybe you can suggest me:

• apps to install for a simple family nas
• a way to access some linux like terminal to try and identify why the motherboard's ethernet port is not working
• is it already possible to raid 1, two drives, for the OS/boot drive
• Is it possible to dual boot with Windows? i guess it is not adviced because windows updates might mess up the boot? Alternative?

Sorry for asking damn question/suggestions. I am a noob on deep waters, and that's why i wanted and paid for HEXOS 

[ubergeek]

So to hit on your boot drive redundancy you will need to have a computer that can raid drives together in a raid0/1 configuration.  If you are worried about loosing your os drive in the meantime I suggest looking Into a program called urbackup. You can run it on a windows computer and do regularly backups and deployment if you have the os drive fail. 

If you wanted to dual boot you could if you wanted during install you will have to partition the drive to hold both os versions. It's kinda odd to do it this way but if you need a windows machine I would reccomend building a VM threw the truenas ui for this.

If you want to access the Linux side of things to determine the issue with the network I would just load Into the truenas ui and follow the steps.

 

Web UI access:

Go to the System Settings section in the TrueNAS web interface and select "Shell" to open a terminal window within the browser. 

 

[Ioannis]

3 hours ago, ubergeek said:

So to hit on your boot drive redundancy you will need to have a computer that can raid drives together in a raid0/1 configuration.  If you are worried about loosing your os drive in the meantime I suggest looking Into a program called urbackup. You can run it on a windows computer and do regularly backups and deployment if you have the os drive fail. 

If you wanted to dual boot you could if you wanted during install you will have to partition the drive to hold both os versions. It's kinda odd to do it this way but if you need a windows machine I would reccomend building a VM threw the truenas ui for this.

If you want to access the Linux side of things to determine the issue with the network I would just load Into the truenas ui and follow the steps.

 

Web UI access:

Go to the System Settings section in the TrueNAS web interface and select "Shell" to open a terminal window within the browser. 

 

Thanks for the reply. I will slowly (as I find time) try to adress your points.
Seems reasonalbe all you said, and I will check them out.

Thank you for the tips @ubergeek

[PsychoWards]

Hey @Ioannis

Hexos/Truenas is using ZFS and not normal RAID, meaning there is different wording and numbers involved in describing the different redundancy modes. ZFS Raids are called as fallowing:

Stripe: similar to Raid0 (the Data is split across 2 drives, if 1 drive dies you lose everything)

Mirrored: similar to Raid1 (the Data is mirrored on both drives you can loose 1 drive)

RaidZ1: similar to Raid5 (you need at least 3 drives and can loose 1 drive without loosing data)

RaidZ2: you can loose 2 drives without loosing data

RaidZ3: you can loose 3 drives.

As you see Raid1 and RaidZ1 are very different things and in this forum you will most likely only find the ZFS naming schema and I will use it in this post as well.

Already today, during the installation, or afterwards in Truenas, you can create mirrored boot drives with 2 drives, this is supported out of the box and not difficult to setup at all. If you want to have the piece of mind just chuck in an additional 256GB NVME SSD in there and you are good to go. Just avoid HW Raid when using Truenas, let Truenas/ZFS take care of the Raid.

Concerning your Networking, it appears that Realtek NICs are not supported, that might be why your motherboard ethernet port isn't working. If this is the case you can check if you can install a PCIe network card, an USB network card is not the optimal solution.

If you only use 2 drives, Hexos will create a mirrored Pool which you cannot extend afterwards. Once you have a mirrored Pool you are stuck with 2 drives. You might want to consider adding a 3 drive now, to create a RaidZ1 Pool, have 12TB of usable storage and still have the ability to extend in the future (which you might not need, but it's worth considering since once you go with the mirrored pool you are stuck with it)

Dual Boot with Windows, what is your use case? I suppose if it's your family NAS your family want to be uploading/browsing there images, or watch movies using plex all the time, they don't take it to kindly if they cannot watch their movies because you need to do sth. in Windows. I would suggest running Windows in a VM in Hexos/Truenas if this would be a valid approach.

Concerning SSH into Linux/Truenas, you first need to enable ssh for your user/truenas admin, enable ssh itself and then you can use putty or the onboard windows terminal using:

ssh truenas_admin@<Hexos-IP>

And then enter your password and you are connected via SSH with the server.

[Ioannis]

Thank you so much @PsychoWards. Much appreciated for the detailed explanations and  suggestions. Everything you wrote seems to click in place like a perfectly placed Lego. In the near future, I will go  and work over everything you said with diligence.

 The "for the moment status":

• I had only heard of ZFS, without understanding the significance and difference with Raid. Thanks for letting me know.
• I will do as you say for the boot drive, getting a second and letting the OS to handle it.
• For the networking card, Iwill think it strongly. I was also leaning into that idea.
• My geeky side wants so much to have the ability to extend the drive pool, but my rational side says "no, not yet at least" because:
  • Last 9 years I accumulated less than 2TB, thus I expect the 6TB that I have available in the current mirrored pool to last at least another 5-7 years.
  • After 5-7 years, I am expecting to accumulate some experience with this current built-NAS, and I will be happy to make a new project then. Conciquently investing in a newer, better and more power efficient system. Or maybe not. To be seen.
  • Currently, I wish to restrict everything within this office PC i bought, and I cannot put more 3.5" drives in there.
  • But again, thanks for pointing this out, because although I had already decided on that, I did not know of it (when I was making the decision) and now I know better!!!
• As for the windows machine.
  • I want the option to run a complicated server, that someone compiled for a windows machine. Maybe i will never do it.
  • Thanks for letting me know. Reading your answer I now know that "running Windows in a VM in Hexos/Truenas if this would be a valid approach" and I will investigate further on how to VM in Truenas a Windows machine.
  • if not for the server I mentioned, I will make the VW just for the "LOLs" and learning.
• I never thought about SSH. Now that you mention it though it sounds so naturally, and yes I will look into that soon.

I will update the thread once take actions, though it will take time since I have limitted time.
so much appreciated❤️

 

[PsychoWards]

Hey @Ioannis

I'm happy that I could help. 🙂

Concerning your storage usage, if you decide to look into Plex and to store your existing DVDs/Blurays as well you can quickly use up another 1-2TB, just worth a consideration.

About the need for the windows machine, is there nothing similar which you can run in Docker which does the same thing?

And last but not least, take your time, it's supposed to be a fun ride and not a stressful one.

[flat4vw]

I had to google CHF

just saying

[PsychoWards]

1 hour ago, flat4vw said:

I had to google CHF

just saying

Schweizer Franken, not that uncommon of a currency 🙂

[Ioannis]

On 1/7/2025 at 12:55 PM, PsychoWards said:

Concerning your storage usage, if you decide to look into Plex and to store your existing DVDs/Blurays as well you can quickly use up another 1-2TB, just worth a consideration.

About the need for the windows machine, is there nothing similar which you can run in Docker which does the same thing?

And last but not least, take your time, it's supposed to be a fun ride and not a stressful one.

@PsychoWards Thanks for coming back to me!

To your points.

• All my media are already contrained within the 2TB I already mentioned, gathered the last 5-9 years. This is why I assume that currently available space of 6TB. After I mirror the HEXOS boot drive, the case/pc will leave me limited options, but I have already ideas if needed. (1 sata, and several PCI slots available)
• Not sure yet, if I am going to need to create a VM for a windows machine. But unfortunately, the created of what I need does not have a Docker. These is the least of my concerns anyway, so I will check again, just in case. thanks for pointing it out.
• I am taking my sweet time indeed, but yet again, I can hardly contain my geeky side 😛 
   

Furthmore, I already ordered a network card and some drives to mirror my HEXOS/boot-drive.
I will update the thread after the instalation.

[Ioannis]

So, probably the final HW update. (for now at least, for now 😉) 

Let's recap. I bought a second hand office pc

• HP EliteDesk 800 G5 SFF (250 swiss francs)
  • CPU i7-9700 (8-Core)
  • 16 GB DDR4-2666 (1 stick)
  • 256 nvme SSD
• Upgrades
  • another 16 GB DDR4-2666 (1 stick; now two empty, 34 euro)
  • 2 x new Seagate IronWolf 6 TB, 3.5", CMR (for a total of 296 swiss francs)
    • Special mounting screws were needed (18 euro; rip-off; I did not want to put zip ties)
  • another 256 nvme SSD (15 swiss francs; to mirror the boot drive)
  • Gigabit Ethernet PCI Express 1x expansion card, 2-port (29 swiss francs; the montherboard's ethernet port was not recognized;)

... and still exploring.

Total (arpox.) cost in USD: System 360 + Drives 325

• appart from the drives, which I hope I chose well
• The system is not cheap, not too expensive
  • and although it can now only be expanded/upgrade through PCIe slots
  • I hope it will last me for 5-9 years.

Thanks to all for your great advice. Looking forward to