Happy to contribute not only to TrueNAS but also to OpenZFS upstream !!
The official announcement from iXsystems: https://www.truenas.com/blog/blog-truenas-26-beta1-release/
https://www.phoronix.com/news/TrueNAS-26-Beta
Download the BETA iso from here: https://download.truenas.com/TrueNAS-26-BETA/26.0.0-BETA.1/TrueNAS-26.0.0-BETA.1.iso
The .update file version is available here: https://update-public.sys.truenas.net/TrueNAS-26-BETA/TrueNAS-26.0.0-BETA.1.update
This is a cautionary tale about how I nearly lost everything on my external SSD because of a moment of carelessness.
I wanted to create a bootable USB with Ventoy to run a Linux or FreeBSD ISO. Simple enough — I’ve done it a hundred times. The problem was that I also had my external SSD connected at the same time.
I somehow selected the wrong disk. Instead of formatting the USB stick, I formatted my external SSD. Just like that — all my data was gone.
That sinking feeling when you realize what you’ve done is something I wouldn’t wish on anyone.
Thankfully, I was able to recover most of my data using PhotoRec, a free and open-source data recovery tool (currently at version 7.2, with 7.3 in beta as of January 2026). PhotoRec ignores the filesystem and goes after the underlying data, so it works even after formatting. It can recover over 480 file formats.
Install it (it comes with TestDisk):
# Arch Linux
sudo pacman -S testdisk
# FreeBSD
pkg install testdiskRun it:
sudo photorec /dev/sdXPhotoRec will scan the disk and recover files into a directory of your choice. It recovered most of my files, though filenames and directory structure were lost — everything gets sorted by file type.
lsblk before any destructive operation. Verify the disk size and partitions match what you expect. Ventoy (currently at v1.1.10) shows disk names and sizes — take the extra second to verify.Don’t be like me. Disconnect your drives, check twice, and back up your data. Your future self will thank you.
The latest episode of TrueNAS Tech Talk (T3) — Episode 56 — dropped on March 6, 2026, and it’s packed with news that every TrueNAS homelab enthusiast and sysadmin will want to hear. Hosts Kris Moore and Chris Peredun (the TrueNAS HoneyBadger) cover the upcoming TrueNAS 26 release schedule, a deep dive into the new dataset tiering feature, and tackle eight viewer questions.
TrueNAS 26: A (Tentative!) Release Timeline
The big headline this week is that Kris and Chris finally lay out the tentative roadmap from the first TrueNAS 26 BETA release all the way through to the .0 general availability. If you’ve been waiting to know when you can get your hands on the next generation of TrueNAS software, this episode gives you the clearest picture yet. No more codenames, no more decimal versioning — as the team confirmed back in Ep. 52, TrueNAS is moving to a clean annual release cycle, and 26 is the first major fruit of that shift.
Dataset Tiering: Hybrid Storage Gets Smarter
One of the standout features coming to TrueNAS 26 is dataset tiering — the ability to mix fast flash and spinning-disk pools and automatically tier datasets (or shares) between them. This is an Enterprise-tier feature, meaning it won’t land in the Community Edition, but the architecture is fascinating for anyone interested in how ZFS and TrueNAS manage data placement at scale. Since this is implemented at the TrueNAS layer rather than directly in OpenZFS, pools remain compatible with standard OpenZFS if you ever need to migrate away, though some caveats may apply.
For those of us running pure Community Edition homelabs — Docker stacks, S3-compatible storage, and all — it’s still a great signal of the direction TrueNAS engineering is heading.
Eight Viewer Questions
As always, Kris and Chris close out the episode with a batch of community questions — likely touching on storage configuration, upgrade paths, and follow-up on ZFS AnyRaid and Spotlight search (truesearch) from recent episodes.
Why This Episode Matters for Homelab Users
If you’re self-hosting on TrueNAS Scale — running Docker containers, managing snapshots over Tailscale, or experimenting with S3-compatible backends like RustFS or Garage — TrueNAS 26 is a significant milestone. The annual cadence promises more predictable upgrade windows, and features like dataset tiering give a window into where the platform’s storage smarts are heading.
Watch the full episode on the TrueNAS blog or on YouTube.
T3 Tech Talk is a weekly podcast from the TrueNAS team. New episodes drop every Thursday.
So …
I joined StorJ, a distributed cloud storage platform, to back up approximately 1 TB of data. StorJ uses strong encryption and distributes file partitions across multiple nodes worldwide.
The first step is to set up an iX-StorJ account and create a bucket. The Starter Pack plan costs $150 per year and includes up to 5 TB of storage.
To back up your data to the bucket, you need to create an access key and then import it as a Cloud Credential.
The world’s highest capacity storage device that can store 12,500 4K movies!!
read speeds of up to 12 GB/s and write speeds of up to 3 GB/s.
Intends to achieve fully fanless GPU servers. Offer hot-swappable design and both sides cooling for AI-centric data centers.
A new backup tool. It provides many advantages compared to TimeShift such as:
Caveat: It is not free …
In Portland, Oregon.
A user shares his experience with a twenty-four 4 TB drives NAS system using ZFS.
“Performance delta focuses on the relationship of each dedup routine compared to un-deduped storage on the same hardware. It’s the same data but organized differently.
Fast dedup outperforms legacy dedup by almost 25% of the raw performance.“
Even Bcachefs that is out like a year and not even that mature has better speeds … XFS was the fastest in almost every benchmark.
I am disappointed to say the least.
/root 