7 Drives Z3 or Z2?

[DoubleIPA]

I have 7 4TB drives and originally planned to go with 6 drives in z2 and have a spare drive. However I'm now thinking why not just put all 7 in and go with Z3. I'm gathering it's overkill >> #8

This is a home NAS for computer backup, music and video streaming.

I have 32GB of ECC RAM and another 6 x 3TB pool in the system. So I know I'm pushing RAM requirements, but this is for home use.

 

[Rand]

Given that Freenas cant use spares i'd say go with Z3;)
Alternatively go 3x Mirror and keep it as cold spare.

 

[cyberjock]

For home users, it a bit overkill when comparing redundancy versus cost. It's totally your choice to use it though. I'm using it... /shrug.

What's important to understand is that each situation is unique. And while I'm comfortable with what I said for that exact situation, each situation requires a separate analysis of how much protection you need.

 

[jgreco]

Z3 will be a bit slower. But it should be a totally awesome NAS. The ZFS archival filer here is 12 x 4TB (11 in RAIDZ3 with a spare) and it isn't exactly slow.

 

[indy]

Actually I went with raidz3 once I realized that I would basically have to keep a cold spare with raidz2. (At least to make myself feel safe.)
Might as well have another level of redundancy imo.
If I had several vdevs I would go with raidz2 and a cold spare.

 

[DoubleIPA]

Okay.. well I'm thinking I'm going with Z3 just because I have the drive and might as well use it. I have run into other issues, but I can figure them out. I have a Norco RPC-3216 and the backplane's seem to be defective. I tried various cables and they see the drives, but I had some issues. When I run them with regular SATA cables I no long see the errors. Smart Status at first was reporting a bad drive and then some other issues appeared. I called the company I bought it from and they reduced the price so the chassis ended up coasting me $120. I removed the backplane for the first raid set and everything is running smoother. I read online this is a common issue for the Norco model.

This makes is so I have to wait to get this raid up since I don't have enough molex to SATA adapters.

Anyway.. Thank you all for your advice, I really appreciate it.