Four(x4) 4TB Western Digital Red NAS Drives

dberladyn

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Joined
Nov 29, 2021
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6
Hi, I apologise for not having the time to browse the forums.

I have recently built a new machine with a 128GB M.2 boot drive and four Western Digital Red 4TB NAS drives. Late at night, after assembling, I built a pool just intending to experiment thinking I would re-adjust the options later. I don't remember what I selected, likely just the base options that were given. With four 4TB drives, I have been left with a RAID of some sort that gives me just under 7TB. I was expecting to lose maybe 4TB in a RAID 5 configuration, but not over 8TB. I haven't really explored things too much, but I do not see a lot of straight forward options for rebuilding the pool.

I just intend to use this as a home NAS for backups and secure storage. I only see the need for one pool. Does anyone have suggestions? Input? Advice?
 

Alecmascot

Guru
Joined
Mar 18, 2014
Messages
1,175
Appologise for not having time to respond to your post.
 

NugentS

MVP
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Apr 16, 2020
Messages
2,945
Results of "zpool status" at the shell please

You can always delete the pool and start over
 

dberladyn

Cadet
Joined
Nov 29, 2021
Messages
6
the configuration database and will be reset on reboot.

root@truenas[~]# zpool status
pool: Primary_Pool
state: ONLINE
scan: scrub repaired 0B in 00:00:32 with 0 errors on Mon Nov 29 01:24:59 2021
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Primary_Pool ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/568142bb-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/56757f58-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/569f78cf-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/56ad23a0-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
 

dberladyn

Cadet
Joined
Nov 29, 2021
Messages
6
the configuration database and will be reset on reboot.

root@truenas[~]# zpool status
pool: Primary_Pool
state: ONLINE
scan: scrub repaired 0B in 00:00:32 with 0 errors on Mon Nov 29 01:24:59 2021
config:

NAME STATE READ WRITE CKSUM
Primary_Pool ONLINE 0 0 0
raidz2-0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/568142bb-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/56757f58-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/569f78cf-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0
gptid/56ad23a0-50da-11ec-bc93-244bfecfacc0 ONLINE 0 0 0

errors: No known data errors

pool: boot-pool
state: ONLINE
config:
 

dberladyn

Cadet
Joined
Nov 29, 2021
Messages
6
I am still r
Screenshot 2021-11-29 at 15-14-18 TrueNAS - 192 168 0 35.png
 

dberladyn

Cadet
Joined
Nov 29, 2021
Messages
6
Sorry for the multiple replies I am still familiarizing myself with both the admin and the forum software.
 

dberladyn

Cadet
Joined
Nov 29, 2021
Messages
6
After doing a bit of reading, I think I am fine. I am disappointed to lose so much Storage space, but on the other hand I don't personally need more than 6 terabytes of storage. That's more than enough for me. Thanks for the replies.
 

NugentS

MVP
Joined
Apr 16, 2020
Messages
2,945
Make sure those drives are not SMR drives. If they are then they need replacing before attempting to use in anger
You have a RAIDZ2 which is the equivalent of a RAID 6, not a RAID 5
 

Heracles

Wizard
Joined
Feb 2, 2018
Messages
1,401
I don't personally need more than 6 terabytes of storage.

Hi,

Well, you are short then. A pool should never be filled. Usually, the maximum level that is considered safe is 80%. From that, it becomes more and more urgent to increase the pool's size. There are people who lost it all when their pool reached 100%. So if your need on day 1 is 6T, to have 7 is far to be enough.

Also, RaidZ1, a structure with only a single drive used for redundancy, is not recommended for drives bigger than 1TB. The reason is that when it will be time to rebuild, all of the drives must work perfectly and not return a single error because there is not parity to detect / fix any of these. That means that your 3 remaining drives must read 12 TB without a single error.

4 drives is also close to a minimum. It forces you to use 50% of your drives as redundancy to avoid the problem described above.

So first question is :
How many drives can you fit in your server (and please, give us complete hardware details for that server...) ?
How much data do you expect to add in your pool over the time (per year) ?
What usage that pool will serve ? (backups, media server, VMs, ...)

If you can have up to 8 drives and will not do VMs, to add 4 extras 4TB drives would be good. That would allow you to create an 8x 4TB RaidZ-2 which will give you 24 TB of usable space. If you do not expect to add that much, you can go for a total of 6x 4TB. That will give you a RaidZ-2 vDev of 16 usable TB, meaning your initial usage will be just below the optimal mark of 50% with a good margin before reaching 80%.
 
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