Expanding/Adding Storage - as a seperate Volume

[Deleted member 85691]

Hi there,

so I want to "expand" my storage or better said, add two drives to my existing NAS-setup. I currently have 4x500GB HDD + 40GB SSD in a RaidZ2 Volume.
I want to add two drives, and run them mirrored, so if possible as a seperate Volume, not adding to the above mentioned pool.


First, I want to know wether this is possible. I did some reasearch and I haven't found anything that says it isnt but I just want to make sure it works.


Second, I have a question concerning the current storage. The Mainboard Im using has 8 Sata6GB/s Ports, but 2 of them are controlled by the ASMedia Storage Controller. I dont have any drives connected to it currently, but i will have to connect drives to it. Will there be problems concerning the Storage Controller ?


Third, I want to move two drives connected to the AMD SB950 controller to the ASMedia Storage controller. Can i just plug the drives into different ports without problems ? I dont want to lose data or destroy my current ZFS RaidZ2 setup.

Thank you for helping :)

 

[Stux]

Hi there,

so I want to "expand" my storage or better said, add two drives to my existing NAS-setup. I currently have 4x500GB HDD + 40GB SSD in a RaidZ2 Volume.
I want to add two drives, and run them mirrored, so if possible as a separate Volume, not adding to the above mentioned pool.


First, I want to know weather this is possible. I did some reasearch and I haven't found anything that says it isnt but I just want to make sure it works.

Yep.

Second, I have a question concerning the current storage. The Mainboard Im using has 8 Sata6GB/s Ports, but 2 of them are controlled by the ASMedia Storage Controller. I don't have any drives connected to it currently, but i will have to connect drives to it. Will there be problems concerning the Storage Controller ?

Possibly. Non intel Sata controllers are often buggy.

Third, I want to move two drives connected to the AMD SB950 controller to the ASMedia Storage controller. Can i just plug the drives into different ports without problems ? I don't want to lose data or destroy my current ZFS RaidZ2 setup.

Thank you for helping :)

ZFS doesn’t care which port a drive is on. The problem is purely about the reliability of the hardware/driver affecting that port.

Suck it and see. Perhaps consider putting only one drive from each pool on the asmedia controller. That way if the controller stuffs up two disks at once it won’t kill a pool. Your raudz2 pool will be fine and so will your mirror pool.

Meanwhile, if you do get errors/strange behavior on the devices connected to those ports then stop using them.

I’d suggest an LSI HBA as a replacement of necessary.

 

[Deleted member 85691]

Yep.



Possibly. Non intel Sata controllers are often buggy.



ZFS doesn’t care which port a drive is on. The problem is purely about the reliability of the hardware/driver affecting that port.

Suck it and see. Perhaps consider putting only one drive from each pool on the asmedia controller. That way if the controller stuffs up two disks at once it won’t kill a pool. Your raudz2 pool will be fine and so will your mirror pool.

Meanwhile, if you do get errors/strange behavior on the devices connected to those ports then stop using them.

I’d suggest an LSI HBA as a replacement of necessary.

Awesome, thank you for the reply! I will just move one of the current drives over to the ASMedia Controller and will report how everything turns out.
Thanks !