Can I start with one drive and upgrade over time without formatting/reinstalling?

[SauRoN]

My apologies if this has been asked before.

Essentially I have a Windows 10 Storage Space configuration now with Simple (no redundancy) setup. I want to get rid of the resource hog and just bought a new 4TB drive. However I have 2 x 1TB drives in the same box but if I use 4+1+1 I'll only get 1TB of total storage on FreeNAS.

So my question is really can I start with the 4TB ONLY and then in future buy another 4TB and another 4TB and another 4TB as I have cash flow and extend the array onto those and then introduce redundancy?

Or do I have to start with 3 drives minimum?

 

[scwst]

So the first question is, do you have backups of your data if you have no redundancy in the current system. If not, you probably want to stop doing anything else and take care of that first. Einmal ist keinmal, as the Germans say - once doesn't count.

Second, ZFS, the file system at the heart of FreeNAS, doesn't really make that much sense without redundancy. If you have 2 x 1 TB drives, you could start out combining them to one mirrored vdev and start with that as your pool (assuming you have less than 1 TB of data). Then, once you have two 4 TB drives, you can mirror them to another vdev, and extend your pool for 5 TB of storage.

Now, if you're not sure what a "vdev" and a "pool" is, I'll have to refer you to the documentation - FreeNAS and ZFS unfortunately require a bit of background knowledge. ZFS especially is very different from other file systems, because it was written by space aliens and sent back to Earth through a hole in the space-time continuum. That's not what is says in the docs, but trust me. It's weird. It was aliens. Everything else is a cover story.

 

[SauRoN]

LOL @ written by space aliens.

No backups at present because the data in question doesn't need to be backed up really. It's only going forward that I would like to have a redundant system that facilitates more uptime.

The problem really is that I have about 3TB of data that I would like to keep live for now, thus the logic of dropping it on the 4TB and expanding it "live" in future.

But that's you've pretty much confirmed for me that the way I want to do it FreeNAS won't fit the solution so it's back to UnRAID I go.


Or just stick with Storage Spaces until such a time that I have 3 x 4TB's available.

 

[danb35]

Or do I have to start with 3 drives minimum?

You absolutely don't need to start with a minimum of three disks. But if you want redundancy, you need at least two. It's possible (though not currently easy) to turn a single-disk volume into a two-disk mirror, so adding the second disk will give you redundancy. You can then easily add pairs of disks to increase your capacity while retaining redundancy.

 

[melloa]

Good day @SauRoN. FreeNAS offers lots of flexibility regarding upgrading your pool, besides been super secure. Take a look at the document Mr. @cyberjock wrote: https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

 

[Stux]

So, you could add drives two at a time in mirrored pairs. This would work very well.

The only issue is that you'd be losing 50% of your drives to redundancy.

If you wanted to go for more storage efficiency then you would need to use RaidZ1 or RaidZ2 with more drives, and you can't just add a single drive to a RaidZ1/2 vdev and have it grow like you would like unfortunately.

 

[Stux]

So, one approach would be have a mirror of the 2 1TB drives and a separate pool with just the 4TB drive.

This gets you 1TB of redundant storage for the the 'good' stuff, and 4TB for the stuff you don't mind losing.

When you can afford another 4TB, add it to the original 2x1TB pool as a stripe (after burnin testing). Copy the data off your original 4TB non-redundant pool to your 'redundant pool' (which is currently NOT redundant). Then add the original 4TB disk as a mirror of the 4TB stripe.

Then you will have a 5TB redundant pool.

In future you can add another pair of drives to safely grow the pool, or replace both of the 1TB drives to expand the pool.

 

[depasseg]

but if I use 4+1+1 I'll only get 1TB of total storage on FreeNAS

If you do a RAIDZ1 pool, you will have 2TB usable, but once you upgrade the 1TB drives to 4TB, you will have 8TB (it will auto-expand).

 

[ewhac]

If you do a RAIDZ1 pool, you will have 2TB usable, but once you upgrade the 1TB drives to 4TB, you will have 8TB (it will auto-expand).

...Except that, with 4TB drives, RAID-Z1 isn't enough redundancy. You really want RAID-Z2 in that case.

 

[SauRoN]

Thanks gents.

I've decided to trial UnRAID over FreeNAS for now due to the requirement to expand.

So far so good and it seems it should be as simple as adding a parity drive down the line to gain (1 disk) redundancy.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks gents.

I've decided to trial UnRAID over FreeNAS for now due to the requirement to expand.

So far so good and it seems it should be as simple as adding a parity drive down the line to gain (1 disk) redundancy.

Going over to the dark side, sorry to hear that. I hope you will come back to the true path in time.

 

[danb35]

I've decided to trial UnRAID over FreeNAS for now due to the requirement to expand.

If you think it will meet your needs better, go for it. For me, the homegrown quasi-RAID is a huge turn-off, but de gustibus non disputandem and all that...

Edit: I completely understand the desire to be able to arbitrarily add disks (for data or redundancy) to a RAID set, and wish ZFS offered that ability. I think the OpenZFS devs wish that too, but adding that ability would be very complicated. I don't think it's at all an unreasonable desire, but for me, the data integrity offered by ZFS outweighs the convenience of being able to add a single disk to a RAID set and have that add redundant storage to the system.