Hello, I am new to FreeNAS but have recently acquired a 45-bay SuperMicro JBOD and have a spare r710 to run FreeNAS. I also purchased seven of the 8TB easy stores that BestBuy had on sale this weekend. I plan to set them up in RaidZ3. My current storage solution is an 8-bay Synology that is fully populated with 4TB WD Reds. They have been in service for almost two years now but according to the Synology they are passing extended SMART tests.
My question is, is it ok to use seven of those drives in another RaidZ3 vdev added to the same pool with the 8TB drives? Or do all the vdevs in that pool need to be 8TB drives? Is it safe to use those drives seeing as they have been in service for nearly two years already? If the drives don't have to be the same size in the pool is it ok for them to be wildly different? For example could I add a seven drive RaidZ3 of 2TB drives to the same pool as the 8TB drives?
This pool will be mainly for Plex media storage. Also I understand the drives in a vdev should be identically sized or the vdev will only allocate space as if all drives were the same size as the smallest in the vdev. Just not sure if that is also recommended across vdevs in a pool.
My question is, is it ok to use seven of those drives in another RaidZ3 vdev added to the same pool with the 8TB drives? Or do all the vdevs in that pool need to be 8TB drives? Is it safe to use those drives seeing as they have been in service for nearly two years already? If the drives don't have to be the same size in the pool is it ok for them to be wildly different? For example could I add a seven drive RaidZ3 of 2TB drives to the same pool as the 8TB drives?
This pool will be mainly for Plex media storage. Also I understand the drives in a vdev should be identically sized or the vdev will only allocate space as if all drives were the same size as the smallest in the vdev. Just not sure if that is also recommended across vdevs in a pool.