I recently got a new storage server and decided to give TrueNAS Scale a try after four years of not touching it. In the end, Unraid still won the day. Here’s why.
TrueNAS Scale Has Come a Long Way From the Days of FreeNAS
TrueNAS (which used to be FreeNAS) has come quite a long way in recent years. Originally based on FreeBSD, TrueNAS Scale, the latest version of the operating system, offers a lot more modern features than it used to be.
Being based on a standard Linux kernel now, TrueNAS Scale offers proper Docker support now instead of the previous Jails that FreeNAS used. This is a huge upgrade for TrueNAS and was one of the reasons I was considering using it in my server stack.
TrueNAS Scale also just received the ability to expand VDEVs, which is pretty great. Previously, upgrading your storage pool on TrueNAS was somewhat cumbersome. Being based around the ZFS file system, you’d use traditional RAID styles (typically RAIDZ1 or RAIDZ2, depending on whether you want to be redundant for up to one or two drive failures). In the past, you’d have to rebuild the array to expand, more or less.
Now, you can just add an extra drive (or multiple) to an existing RAID, and it’ll expand it. You’re still limited to only using drives of the same size (or having the RAID be built against the drive with the lowest amount of storage in the pool). However, it is nice that you can expand it easily now.
The other thing that TrueNAS has held onto all these years is its price: free. Yep, TrueNAS is completely free (unless you want to go with their enterprise service or their pre-built systems). But, for the average user, TrueNAS is completely and utterly free. This was also another feature that drew me to give it a try again as I spun up a new server.
Speaking of, let’s talk about that for a moment. The entire reason I dove down the “TrueNAS vs Unraid” rabbit hole again is because I recently picked up another storage server. I came across a deal I couldn’t pass up on r/homelabsales for a storage server that came with 10 3TB SAS drives (plus a ton of RAM and other features). So, I picked it up to use for my photo storage.
I really wanted to love and use TrueNAS on the server. It is free, after all. However, after spending a week or so with TrueNAS, I just couldn’t. The UI was a bit more clunky than I liked, Docker containers were way more complicated than I was used to, and setting up shares sometimes worked but not always.
I could have likely spent some time figuring it all out, but at the end of the day, time is also money. And I had already spent a good while trying to get it to work. So, I decided to go with the storage server solution I’ve been using since 2021: Unraid.
Unraid Might Cost, but It’s Worth It
Unraid is very untraditional when it comes to how it functions as a storage server. Going with Unraid instead of TrueNAS had a lot of benefits for me. One of which is that I’m familiar with it since I’ve been using it for nearly four years. The other is the way it handles storage.
While TrueNAS Scale uses a more traditional RAID style, Unraid uses parity. In short, instead of having to have all the same sized drives, Unraid allows you to use any size drives you want within your array. It simply reserves the largest drive for parity.
I won’t get into how parity works. Unraid has a great explainer of how it works if you want to dive deeper. The main thing to know is that you lose the largest drive (in my primary Unraid server, that’s 12TB), and then your storage is made up of all the drives below that. You can have drives the same size as your parity drive or smaller.
While the new server I picked up currently has 10 3TB drives in it, expanding it in the future is what I was mainly thinking about. With TrueNAS, I’d have to keep buying 3TB drives, and if I wanted to move away from 3TB as the storage size, I’d have to replace all the drives. On Unraid? I just simply slot in a larger drive, and away I go.
Right now, I have a 3TB drive as my parity, which gives me approximately 27TB of available storage. But, if I want to up that, I can easily slot in a 12TB and gain that other 3TB drive back, and now I can put larger drives (up to 12TB) in the array and quickly grow and expand the server. I can remove a 3TB drive and replace it with a 6TB, no problem, for instance.
I also prefer how Unraid handles caching and moving files around. TrueNAS does offer caching, but it’s not done in the same way Unraid does. With Unraid, you can set up a drive as a cache drive where all incoming files go to the drive, and then a mover will move them to the array. I typically will go with 1-2TB NVMe drives on a PCIe adapter for cache, so as files ingress into the server, they hit NVMe first and then eventually migrate to the slower spinning drives.
Unraid is also much easier for me to use with Docker. While I’m planning to migrate all of my apps and services off of both my Unraid servers and onto a separate apps server, I still wanted the easy ability to spin up something on the server if necessary. TrueNAS has quite a complicated setup when it comes to Docker containers and is also relatively limited in the available containers unless you use third-party repos.
Unraid, on the other hand, has thousands of containers ready to go out of the box. Most of the containers are pre-configured for you, outside of maybe changing some folder paths or ports. Unraid is much more user-friendly when it comes to just about everything, in my experience.
However, Unraid isn’t free like TrueNAS. There’s a cost for the license to help with maintaining and updating the operating system. If you only plan to attach six storage devices, then it can be had for as low as $49. You get a year of updates at that price, and it’s $36 per year thereafter if you want to continue getting updates. Or, you can just stick with whichever the latest version was when your license ends in perpetuity.
Personally, I ended up with the Unleashed license for $109. It lets you have unlimited attached storage devices, but still only comes with a year of updates. I’d like to get the Lifetime license, but at $249, I’m just not ready to spend that right now. I can upgrade in the future from my Unleased license to Lifetime for $149, so it’s only $10 more than buying it upfront.
Unraid Is the Best Solution for Home Servers and NAS Systems
At the end of the day, Unraid is just more user-friendly than TrueNAS. There’s no doubt that TrueNAS offers greater flexibility with its standard RAID options. And, some might argue (rightfully so), that TrueNAS offers better data protection with things like RAIDZ2 and RAIDZ3.
However, for the most user-friendly home NAS operating system, it’s hard not to go with Unraid. The small upfront cost is worth it in the long run. This will be my second Unraid server, and if I ever spun up another storage server, I’d go with Unraid again.
With its better docker support, ability to expand drives freely (without having to worry about keeping the same sized drives together), and just its overall easier usability, Unraid wins hands down as my pick for best home storage server operating system in 2025, just like it did back in 2021.
Plus, Unraid makes it easy to start out small and grow. Most people aren’t going to start with 10 drives in an array. If you have six or fewer, it’s just $49 for the software, and you’ll be good to go. Upgrade from there.
