4 drive setup question, 1 being different

[ideal2545]

Hi Guys,

I'm setting up a small NAS and I'm going to have (3) 500 gig drives and (1) 1TB drive. My understanding is that FreeNas will work with different sized drives and I just want to maximize space while having SOME protection (nothing of criticality will be stored on this drive). Any help with configuring this would be really appreciated, I'm still doing some research and reading through the docs but my head is getting spinned around, some pointing in the right direction would really help.

Thanks
Jon

 

[Bidule0hm]

I'd recommend a RAID-Z1. The 1 TB drive will be considered as a 0.5 TB drive so you'll have about 1.5 TB of usable space (4 * 0.5 TB - 0.5 TB used for parity) ;)

 

[gpsguy]

I concur when BiduleOhm suggestion. Down the road, if you need/want to upgrade, you can replace your smaller drives with larger ones (for example 1TB drives), once all have been replaced, your total storage will grow automatically.

Now, in this day and age, it's probably not cost effective to buy new 1TB drives, but have a 4 disk RAIDz1 vdev gives you a foundation to start with.

 

[ideal2545]

Thanks Guys you really cleared it up for me, I've got it all set up now!

 

[Robert Trevellyan]

Note that if/when the time comes to replace your drives with drives larger than 1TB, or if you begin storing more important data on the system, you may want to consider rebuilding your pool as RAIDZ2. But by then you might have a whole new system...