Raid help. New guy.

[jorgecosta]

I read the recommendations for Hds and purchased Western Digital WD40EFRX x3 (4tb each the CMR kind as recommended)
I read further recommendations to NOT use hardware raid.
running an I7 / 32 g ram for personal non professional use... streaming and backups . Nothing serious like production VMs....
The idea would be to sort of run a Raid 5 (2hds and a backup)
Any recommendations ? and guides / guide lines besides the stuff I read ?
Any how to "for idiots" or a movie on how to raid this properly would be greatly appreciated.
Thanks

 

[jorgecosta]

Bios should present the Hds as Raid or Sata btw ?

 

[Jailer]

How do you have the drives hooked up? Are you running an HBA? How many drives total?

 

[jorgecosta]

Hey Jailer ! thanks for the reply dude.
So I'm running 512g SSD as boot device.
Truenas is already installed on there and it works.
I have 3x WD 4tb drives that I'm not sure how to hook up.
So I guess 4 drives total ?
The motherboard is a Asus board and in the advanced settings , Sata configuration , you have Sata , IDe , Raid or AHCI I believe ?
If you pick raid , you can use the raid controller at boot up and make a raid array there.
I would GUESS this would then report one device to the Nas os ?
Im guessing this is sort of a physical raid controller which is not advised on these forums.

There was also an option for ISCSI support somewhere in the advanced options.

This is NOT my area of expertise , this is my first attempt at a build
Any and all suggestions are appreciated .
Even the "you're an idiot OBVIOUSLY don't do XXXX" comments :)

 

[jgreco]

FreeNAS will not work correctly (or maybe at all) unless you use AHCI. The "RAID" option for mainboards like that is there to offer a driver-based software/chipset combo RAID option for Windows-like things. This isn't useful for ZFS because ZFS acts as your RAID controller.

You're not an idiot OBVIOUSLY because you stopped and asked. Howzzat for a comment. No but seriously it's good to ask.

 

[jorgecosta]

Oh if you meant "physically hooked up" , the drives are connected directly into the mother board with SATA cables...
Which bios option is what I would like to clear up and which options within The nas gui I should use ....

 

[joeschmuck]

The motherboard is a Asus board

Be specific, the model number please so we can provide specific guidance where needed.

Which bios option is what I would like to clear up and which options within The nas gui I should use ....

It is best to start by setting the BIOS back to Factory Defaults so we all know where things are generally set. This would turn off the motherboard RAID setup and setup optimum settings, in general.

Howzzat for a comment.

Good boy, good boy.

 

[Jailer]

Well with 3 data drives your options are limited as far as configuration goes. I would consider adding a 4th drive and create a single RAIDZ2 configuration of them. But that's just my opinion.

Keep in mind you need to plan the storage layout before you commit your data to it. You can't just add another drive if you run out of space. Well you can, but that's bad. There are ways of expanding your storage capacity and it would behoove you to read the ZFS primer so you can make an informed decision on your storage layout before you begin.

 

[jorgecosta]

Maximus Hero VI motherboard , I7 intel random cpu . 32 Gig ram , 512 SSD .
Western Digital WD40EFRX x3.
I have an extra samsung m.2 NVME 970 drive that im not using that I was considering using for Caching...
Drives are clean and I will reset the bios to defaults.

I upgraded the bios last night to the latest available...

So I cant use RaidZ2 with just 3 storage drives ?

I only currently need about 3 tb storage and figured 2x4tb storage (with the third drive just being redundant) would "allow for growth"... how important is a 4th drive ?

 

[jgreco]

So I cant use RaidZ2 with just 3 storage drives ?

Well, that'd be a three way mirror, and yes, you can do that, it just isn't RAIDZ.

 

[jorgecosta]

So do you suggest I do ? I mean ... do I have to buy a 4th drive just cos ? or is there a decent setup in which I use 3 ?
Its 100$ for a drive and I dont need the storage but if you think its worth it ...

 

[JaimieV]

Your options with three drives are

• RAIDZ1 - you get two drive's worth of space, and can lose one drive from the array without data loss
• RAIDZ2 - you get one drive's worth of space, and can lose two drives from the array without data loss
• Mirror x 3 - as RAIDZ2. I presume but don't actually know that the data is arranged differently vs RAIDZ2, but you wouldn't need to care
• Mirror x 2 plus a single drive to backup to. One drive's worth of space, can lose one drive, but you have backup.

I use RAIDZ1 because I have backups and spare HDDs available. It's the ZFS equivalent of the RAID5 you mention in the original post. Your choice is yours :)

No one actually seems to have said out loud: Choose SATA on your motherboard options when using ZFS.