SOLVED Future expansion of "Jail Root", HDD Size fudge factor

[sharkbyte47]

Hi,

I´m setting up my NAS and figured I would like to create my Jail Root on a seperate pool so my storage can spin down.
At the moment I would like to use a spare 80GB 2,5" HDD which has no better use. As soon as I get my hands on a pair of cheap SSDs I would like to replace the HDD with this SSDs.

80GB seems overkill for the JailRoot and I think a mirror of, let´s say two 32-40GB SSDs, would suffice.

Question 1:
Can I partition the HDD before install to 30GB and create a vDev of that and afterwards add the first SSD in mirror and replace the HDD by the second SSD after resilvering?


I have 2 WD Red 3TB in mirror but would love to add a third in the future.

Question 2:
Should I reduce the disk size by some bytes to make sure a 3TB drive from another manufacturer, which could be a tiny bit smaller, will also fit?


I know especially the second question seems obvious and should be answered before, but I couldn´t find any help for the current FreeNAS version.

Thanks for your time, greatly appreciated!

 

[joeschmuck]

Q1: Not sure if you can just use a partition, thought I had done something similar in the older FreeNAS 8.04 days but that was years ago. You should be able to give it a try by adding the hard drive, partition off say 20GB, see if you can create a vDev only using the partition. When you add a larger drive it will automatically expand to the full capacity of the new drive.

Q2: From what I recall, the 2GB SWAP partition created will adjust slightly as needed so you have the same sized partition amongst all the drives because not all drives have the same available drive space as you indicated above.

 

[sharkbyte47]

Thanks Joe!

This answered my questions completely. I will report back in this thread for others to benefit.

Have a good one o/