📘 Volume 1 — Foundations
Build a reliable NAS. This is the volume to read on a plane. By the end, you'll understand drives, vdevs, pools, datasets, SMB, users, permissions, snapshots, and the first apps — well enough to set up TK's exact configuration on your own hardware.
Each chapter builds on the last. The mental model in Chapter 2 is referenced throughout — if you skip it, the rest reads like a recipe instead of a guide. The chapters are short; the cumulative effect is the understanding.
Chapters
📖 Ch 01 · The Question
Where this all started. TK's first message, and why asking the right questions before building matters more than knowing the answers.
5 min read📖 Ch 02 · Mental Model
How TrueNAS works at a glance. The hierarchy of drives → vdevs → pools → datasets → shares. A picture you'll carry through every other chapter.
10 min read📖 Ch 03 · Drives, VDEVs, Pools
What RAIDZ2 is, what a pool is, why your 6×12TB gives you ~44TB usable, and why you can't just add a 7th drive later.
15 min read📖 Ch 04 · Datasets
Smart folders with their own permissions, compression, snapshots, quotas, and encryption. The most important concept in the whole system.
12 min read📖 Ch 05 · SMB Shares
How Windows and Mac actually see your NAS. Shares, paths, the two options, and which one to pick.
10 min read📖 Ch 06 · Users & Groups
Accounts for the family, the Family group, when to make a new user, when to just add a group member.
10 min read📖 Ch 07 · Permissions
Who can read, who can write, who can only see their own folder. The model that keeps the family happy and the private stuff private.
15 min read📖 Ch 08 · First Apps
Tailscale, Immich, Jellyfin, Vaultwarden, Paperless-ngx — the five apps that turn a NAS into infrastructure.
12 min read📖 Ch 09 · Snapshots & Scrubs
Time travel for your files. Plus the monthly scrub and weekly SMART tests that catch dying drives before they fail.
12 min read📖 Ch 10 · The Build
Pulling it all together. The actual configuration that runs on TK's pool: dataset layout, schedules, apps, the whole thing in one place.
20 min readWhat you'll know by the end
- How to think about storage in a way that scales from a single drive to a multi-rack setup without rewriting everything.
- The exact pool, dataset, and permission layout for a family NAS with 4 users.
- Which apps to install first, in what order, and why each one matters.
- How to recover from a deleted file, a failing drive, or a ransomware attack.
- Why "just buy a Synology" is sometimes the right answer — and when it isn't.
The most expensive thing you can do in a home lab is rebuild it. Every choice in this volume is made to avoid that. Pick your pool layout once. Pick your dataset tree once. Pick your permission model once. Then live with it for years.