Expanding Storage

[Guinea]

Are you planning to have backup in the same pool? If so then just don't do it.

Instead use snapshots. (The snapshot suggestion makes sense if you want to protect yourself from ransomware or accidental deletions. This is what I assumed which might not be true :) )

Backup to the same pool gives very little extra safety but costs huge space.

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I am not really worried about deletion or ransomware. I am mostly concerned with hardware failures, which I guess is mostly covered by the zfs configuration if I remember correctly. I just don't want a scenario in which something gets corrupted and I lose all of my movies and have to start ripping them again. It has taken me years to chew through my collection and it keeps growing, so if I had to re-rip everything, it would be awful. I wasn't really planning anythig except adding another 8 hard drives to my existing pool to extend the storage. I don't know what my options are in terms of protection though. I have an extra 8 slots in my chassis that are unused at the moment, but it might end up being just more storage down the road.

 

[Guinea]

Burn in definitely before adding to the pool

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Is there instructions on how to do that? I thought I couldn't access the drives until I added them to the pool so how do I go about burning them in before adding them?

 

[Redcoat]

Is there instructions on how to do that? I thought I couldn't access the drives until I added them to the pool so how do I go about burning them in before adding them?

As @danb35 suggested, look in Uncle Fester's guide listed in his signature - the process is well described there.

You can put your new drives in your FreeNAS box and access them before they are added to a pool. It is often recommended that "novices" should not do this however in order to prevent risk to the pool(s) existing on the system. But, if you don't have another machine to which you can connect them for burn in you don't have much option but to do it on your active box, and you can protect your existing data by eliminating one of the steps described in Uncle Fester's guide.

Ignore this specific instruction from Uncle Fester - (as confirmed by iXsystems @wblock here - read that whole thread. too) :

"Before starting tmux we need to enable the kernel geometry debug flags, so type in this command at the command prompt.

sysctl kern.geom.debugflags=0x10"

BUT - please go into the Resources section here and read this one https://www.ixsystems.com/community/resources/hard-drive-burn-in-testing.92/ as well as Uncle Fester's Guide - surely these will answer your questions. There are other excellent HDD references in the Hardware folder of the Resources section, too, that may help you see the bigger picture and raise your confidence.

 

[danb35]

Is there instructions on how to do that?

Yes, in resources you've already been given.

 

[pro lamer]

if you don't have another machine to which you can connect them for burn in you

In other words: if you have a separate machine use it for burn in.

If not then for extra safety you can temporarily remove all your "production" drives and burn the new ones. Afterwards if everything is ok: connect the original drives back.

I wasn't really planning anythig except adding another 8 hard drives to my existing pool to extend the storage. I don't know what my options are in terms of protection though. I have an extra 8 slots in my chassis that are unused at the moment, but it might end up being just more storage down the road.

I'm not following your plans: if you plan to add 8 drives to the pool that doesn't sound as a backup plan but as extension plan. Are you going to use the 8 empty bays for future backup pool?

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[Guinea]

I'm not following your plans: if you plan to add 8 drives to the pool that doesn't sound as a backup plan but as extension plan. Are you going to use the 8 empty bays for future backup pool?

Yes that was my original plan. I just don't know if it is feasible or if it will provide any benefit me.

 

[pro lamer]

Yes that was my original plan. I just don't know if it is feasible or if it will provide any benefit me.

First excuse me writing an obvious thing: To backup 16 drives to 8 drives you will need to have them bigger. For now for example 16x4TB to 8x8TB (roughly).

But later if you replace your 4TB drives with bigger ones you will also need bigger backup pool drives. Luckily bigger and bigger drives are manufactured :)

Edit: somewhat it's similar to what @Kevin Horton wrote...

Secondly: in my opinion even if the backup drives are separate pool you would benefit from rotating the backup drives. You will "just" need 16x4TB main pool plus 2x8x8TB backup drives...

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[Guinea]

First excuse me writing an obvious thing: To backup 16 drives to 8 drives you will need to have them bigger. For now for example 16x4TB to 8x8TB (roughly).

But later if you replace your 4TB drives with bigger ones you will also need bigger backup pool drives. Luckily bigger and bigger drives are manufactured :)

Edit: somewhat it's similar to what @Kevin Horton wrote...

Secondly: in my opinion even if the backup drives are separate pool you would benefit from rotating the backup drives. You will "just" need 16x4TB main pool plus 2x8x8TB backup drives...

Sent from my phone

Yes that makes sense. Ideally I wouldn't have to do this and I could use the last 8 drives for extra storage down the road. I am just worried about losing my data. In reality, that is probably a low chance of happening, but it scares me. It was years of ripping and effort to build up this library.

 

[Kevin Horton]

1. I am just worried about losing my data. In reality, that is probably a low chance of happening, but it scares me. It was years of ripping and effort to build up this library.

If your data is important to you, you really need at least two backups of it. One of those backups should be off site, to protect against theft, fire, etc.

My important data is backed up in at least three places:

1. A second pool on my main server, with automatic replication of the data to this pool,
2. Automatic replication to a second server,
3. Off site backup to two sets of backup disks, with one of them stored off site. Every week I insert the two disk stripe of one backup set in hot swap bays on my server, tell FreeNAS to add the pool, then run a script that uses rsync to copy changed files and then automatically does a scrub. I then take this fresh backup off site, and bring back the other two disks.