Existing FreeNAS server: Adding secondary external drives

[Hunter Norman]

I've built my current freenas setup in an old tower with several 1TB HDDs inside. However, my space is getting clogged up now and it's going to be a while before I have my full 16TB server to convert everything over, so here's my question:

With my existing working server, could I connect 3 of my 2TB external drives and add them all as volumes to expand my storage temporarily? Since my current server has the 1TB drives formatted and my media storage is on a windows computer, where I'm using workgroup and a network setup to save my downloads, I want to make sure I can plug these external drives up, add/format them and then have them shared with the current drives in my workgroup network on windows. I didn't know if there's a particular way I should go about doing this.

Clarification: My freenas is 100% used for plex media storage, so that's why I want to expand my storage but have it all shared across my network as one large data store.

Thanks

 

[joeschmuck]

With my existing working server, could I connect 3 of my 2TB external drives and add them all as volumes to expand my storage temporarily?

Temporarily, No, I don't think so if I understand your question correctly. You want to expand your current pool by adding another vdev of three 2TB drives. You would not be able to remove the vdev.

You never specified if these external drives are eSATA or USB for the connectivity and I don't like to assume.

Lets say these are eSATA then you could create a new pool (not expanding the current pool) and then in Plex just add another library.

Lets say these are USB drives, you could mount them but the last time I did this it was a manual operation via the CLI and it was for a single drive, not to mount three and make a vdev out of them. Rebooting would likely be bad for the pool. But if you just mounted a single drive then I think you could mount the share to Plex, but again I think it's a CLI function. Someone will chime in and correct me if there is a better way to do it.

 

[danb35]

Lets say these are USB drives, you could mount them but the last time I did this it was a manual operation via the CLI and it was for a single drive, not to mount three and make a vdev out of them.

But you could certainly make a separate pool on three USB drives. It probably isn't a good idea, but it ought to work.

 

[Hunter Norman]

Ok so I basically I have no option to add to my existing pool without reformatting and losing data? But I could add the three USB drives and create one new pool, just as an option until I have the whole new server?

 

[joeschmuck]

Sure but you are taking some risk using external USB hard drives of course but it is only to your USB hard drives, not your main pool. But it should work.