After building my home lab and constantly arming it with new devices, I’ve come to a few realizations. The biggest one is that you don’t need to spend a ton of money on new nodes – and this fact holds true for Network-Attached Storage servers as well. In fact, I’ve been using some budget-friendly devices like the LincStation N2 as my storage rigs, and they work a lot better than I initially anticipated.

Heck, TerraMaster recently reached out to me for their latest budget-friendly NAS, though this one caught me off guard since it costs just $250 – about the same as a decent NUC. While the price alone is tempting, what really caught my attention was the fact that the TerraMaster F2-425 shipped with an x86 CPU instead of a typical Arm processor you’d find on a device in this price range.

But as with every inexpensive device, the F2-425 has some issues I’m not too fond of. So, I figured I could make a handful of modifications to enhance its functionality.

About this article: TerraMaster sent me a sample of the F2-425, but the company has no input into this article. I wanted to write about these tweaks because I figured they might help other users with similar budget-friendly setups make the most of their NAS units.

Adding more RAM

This cheap investment goes a long way

Although the F2-425’s Intel N5095 is a decent processor for the price, the 4GB RAM module left a lot to be desired. Since I use ZFS pools, aggressive caching, and containers on my storage servers, I pay a lot of attention to the memory capacity of a NAS – even more so if it's a pre-built chassis where manufacturers tend to use soldered RAM modules. Luckily for me, the F2-425 lets me upgrade the NAS’ memory, with 16GB being its max RAM capacity. That’s more than enough for a budget-friendly NAS, and with LPDDR4 kits costing around $30–35, it wasn’t an expensive investment, either.

Unfortunately, the NAS only has a single RAM slot, so I had to go for a single 16GB memory kit instead of the conventional 2x 8GB configuration. I removed the two screws securing the side panel in place (and it was somewhat annoying because I had to peel off the rubber pads on top of the screws). Then, I removed the 4GB memory module and replaced it with the spare RipJaws 16GB LPDDR4 3200MHz kit I dug out of my tech graveyard.

Installing TrueNAS

It’s my preferred NAS distro

With the memory upgrade complete, it was time to turn my attention to the software aspect of the setup. Personally, I’m fond of TrueNAS, specifically the Scale variant, and I’ve been using it on my primary storage server for a few years. Ever since I realized the F2-425 has an x86 processor, I knew I was going to arm it (pun intended) with TrueNAS instead of TOS. Credit where it’s due, TOS has come a long way since its early years – to the point where I consider it a rock-solid pre-built NAS distro for beginners. In fact, TOS supports BTRFS, which is undoubtedly a solid file system. But as a staunch member of the ZFS faction, it’s the only file system I ever use on my NAS units.

That said, there was one major issue with the F2-425 – it’s a 2-bay NAS that doesn’t include any M.2 SSD slots. I could technically slot an SSD into one of the drive bays, but I wanted the extra redundancy of a mirrored setup. This is where the controversial part begins, as I ended up going with an internal SSD mounted on a USB-to-SATA enclosure as my boot drive.

I’ll admit that anything connected to a USB is far from ideal as the boot drive for a NAS. However, an SSD is far more reliable than conventional flash drives, so I don’t have to worry about low endurance. Plus, if the USB drive does end up failing, I could just reinstall TrueNAS on a different drive and import the pools. That way, I won’t end up losing my precious data. Speaking of, I’d set up a handful of provisions to safeguard my NAS files.

Creating a mirrored pool

And setting up snapshots + Rsync for extra safety

Since I had two drive bays to work with, I wanted to go for a mirrored setup, where TrueNAS stores an extra copy of my data on the second HDD for better fault tolerance. Sure, it cuts the storage capacity of my NAS in half, but it’s a decent way to add some protection to my data. Setting it up was a walk in the park, as I simply chose the Mirror option when creating the Storage pool. For reference, I used two 4TB Seagate IronWolf drives, and since the NAS has a 2.5G Ethernet port, I didn’t have to worry about my hard drives choking the connection.

But as any seasoned NAS user would know, RAID is not a substitute for backups. So, I headed to the Data Protection tab on TrueNAS’s web UI and began configuring the different options there. I scheduled weekly snapshots to prevent accidental deletions. Then, I created an Rsync task that sends essential files to a different NAS (located at a family member’s place) for a 3-2-1 backup setup. Call me paranoid, but I refuse to take any chances with my storage pools.

Deploying useful containers

To level up my NAS game

Together with the Intel N5095 processor and the 16GB memory I installed earlier, my budget-friendly NAS had enough horsepower to run a handful of services, some of which I consider borderline essential for any storage server. Better yet, TrueNAS has a solid collection of apps to choose from without requiring me to configure YAML files or run terminal commands.

I started things off by setting up File Browser, which lets me modify the folders, directories, and documents inside my datasets directly from the web browser. Next, I went with Tailscale to access my NAS remotely and bypass the scourge called CGNAT. I also use Syncthing to synchronize project files between my dev VMs, so I configured a one-way Syncthing link on the F2-425 to add an extra layer of protection for my data. Since I plan to store my ROMs on the NAS, I also armed it with RomM.

Budget-friendly NAS have gotten a lot better these days

Back when I was a teenager drooling over server-grade components, I’d heard countless stories about cheap NAS devices and their limitations. While I wouldn’t call the F2-425 the best NAS there is, I was surprised by how well it turned out after my tweaks. Sure, the 2-bay limitation can cause issues for data hoards, while the 4GB memory was too little for ZFS pools. But for budget users who don’t mind upgrading the RAM later on, it’s a decent NAS, and one that’s bound to see a lot of use in my home lab.