Adding Storage

[sndinc]

I first set up FreeNas last Decemeber to try it out and I like it. I started with 2 3TB drives and 8Gigs of Memory. I believe they are set up as ZFS and Mirrored. I'm not 100% sure how to check how they were setup originally. The drives have a lot of data on them at this point. I am planning to add 2 more 3TB drives and 8Gigs more of memory this weekend. I'm not sure if it is better to just set up another mirrored raid and have to 3TB volumes or if it is better/possibly to set them up some other way (without having to move the data off the current drives).

I thought mirrored was going to be the way to go (the reason, I have a Raid 5 configuration on a Windows machine and do not like the fact I can't just take a drive out and copy the data off if I want to upgrade but it seem I'm not going to be able to do that with the FreeNas anyway) but now I'm not sure if there is a better recommended configuration and if I can convert my current setup to a new configuration without moving the data again. Thanks for any help.

 

[gpsguy]

You can't reuse your existing drives in another form of RAIDz without destroying the pool and starting over. The simplest solution to add the new drives as another mirror.

For general storage with 3TB drives, we recommend using RAIDz2. Even if you backed up your data, recreated your pool, and copied the data back, your available storage would be equivalent to your 2 sets of mirrors. The benefit is that you could loose any two drives, without losing your data. With mirrors, if you lost both drives in one mirror, you'd lose all your data in the volume.

A sweet spot for RAIDz2 is 6 drives. If your budget allows, consider going this route with 6x3TB drives.

 

[sndinc]

I probably won't be upgrading to 6 drives... I don't really think I needed to add 2 more drives (I was just lazy and didn't want to go through the data I had and delete junk I didn't need). The PC where my Raid5 lives is going to be replaced ASAP. I believe I left the data in both places while I "tested" out if I like the FreeNas setup (and for the most part, I think it works great aside from a few things I can't figure out). So, I probably could move the data off and rebuild everything if it is recommended to switch to Raidz2. I really like the speed right now with my mirrored setup. I can copy files quickly and access them quickly... will that remain about the same if I switch to Raidz2 with 4 drives?

 

[SweetAndLow]

Remember you should always have a backup. And yes the speed will appear to be the same over the network. Your network should be the bottleneck not your pool design.