Different Drive Sizes

[bvalentim]

Hello,

I am currently looking for unRAID alternatives. I have 1 - 4tb drive, 3 - 3tb drives and 16 - 1tb drives. Can I use all these drives without losing space on the bigger drives or Parity?

PS...Not sure if this is the correct forum board for this question. If it is not I apologize in advance.

 

[LIGISTX]

I am new as well, but I am going to say..no. If you are going to be setting up some sort of RAID array, it will ALWAYS use the smallest disc size, so all discs will be used as if they where 1 TB. I suppose you could (if it is within your scheme) set up two seperate zdevs, one with the 4 and 3 TB drives, and other with the 1 TB drives. The first zdev will make all drives 3 TB since that is the smallest, and I suppose you could run them in RAIDZ1, although "Z1 is dead" and Z2 is much better for redundancy, which I suggest doing. The other, I would do RAIDZ3, so three discs of redundancy since there are 16 drives total... You would have like 19 TB usable. But, I am a noob, and maybe someone else will chime in.

 

[bvalentim]

Got ya. I know with unRAID as long as the biggest drive is the parity drive you can mix and match drives without losing space. If this software can't I will more than likely go with unRAID

 

[LIGISTX]

Like I said, I am a noob. But that doesn't sound secure from a redundancy standpoint.... I don't know tho, I have not done research into unraid, only freenas and ZFS

 

[Bidule0hm]

I am new as well, but I am going to say..no. If you are going to be setting up some sort of RAID array, it will ALWAYS use the smallest disc size, so all discs will be used as if they where 1 TB. I suppose you could (if it is within your scheme) set up two seperate zdevs, one with the 4 and 3 TB drives, and other with the 1 TB drives. The first zdev will make all drives 3 TB since that is the smallest, and I suppose you could run them in RAIDZ1, although "Z1 is dead" and Z2 is much better for redundancy, which I suggest doing. The other, I would do RAIDZ3, so three discs of redundancy since there are 16 drives total... You would have like 19 TB usable. But, I am a noob, and maybe someone else will chime in.

The OP is asking about unRAID, not ZFS.

As an aside this thread is in the wrong section, and it's even in the wrong forum because we are not unRAID support forum... You'll have far better answers if you ask on the right forum ;)

 

[LIGISTX]

The OP is asking about unRAID, not ZFS.

As an aside this thread is in the wrong section, and it's even in the wrong forum because we are not unRAID support forum... You'll far better answers if you ask on the right forum ;)

Well he said "unraid alternative" so I assumed he wants to try out freenas. But, that being said, I don't think that will work well for him.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Yep, exactly. FreeNAS with ZFS OR another RAID solution, but never use the two at the same time.

 

[LIGISTX]

True, sorry, I always just knee jerk think ZFS is always used in freenas. My bad.

 

[Bidule0hm]

Actually in FreeNAS 9.3 it's ZFS or nothing, you don't have any other filesystem you can chose. But your post was OK, no need to apologize, I've just emphasized to make the things clear to the OP ;)

 

[L]

I think the answer to the original question is .. with zfs you can use all different sized drives. I would use parity though :)

 

[jgreco]

This doesn't belong in the Performance forum. Moved.