Hard Drive Management Help

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zipfel

Dabbler
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Dec 16, 2013
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Hi Everyone,

Just would like to ask the experts here a quick question.

I currently have a 1 x 4TB setup. This drive is full with more data ready to uploaded. So I added these additional hard drives.

2 x 1.5 TB
1 x 1 TB
1 x 4 TB

My end goal is to have 6 x 4TB drives in RAIDZ6 ( I currently have 2 ). I am just waiting to save enough money to afford the addition 4 x 4TB drives. In the mean time I have a problem with how to juggle my data.

My problem is what do I do with my data once I have my 6 x 4TB drives ready to be created into a RAIDZ6?

I was thinking that I could use the 2 x 1.5TB and 1 x 1TB drive installed on my FreeNAS to temporarily hold new data (my 4 TB would still be full) and when it would become time to install the 6 x 4TB RAIDZ6 I would transfer as much of the 4TB as I can onto those three drives + use additional storage I have laying around/friends external drives. But now that I have the 2 x 1.5 TB and 1 x 1TB drive physically installed I am not sure how I can set it up on FreeNAS so that when the time comes to take those drives out of my system I can just pop it into a USB enclosure and upload the data to the new 6 x 4TB RAIDZ6

Does anyone have any suggestions??
 

gpsguy

Active Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2012
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FreeNAS doesn't have a RAIDz6 option. And, I don't understand your current setup. How did you add the additional drives? It might be helpful for you to do a "zpool status -v" and post the results in code tags.

You mention having access to hard disks from friends. Do you (or they) have any spare machines you could borrow temporarily? Put your current drives in it. Setup the new 6 drive system in RAIDz2 and transfer the data to the new box.
 

zipfel

Dabbler
Joined
Dec 16, 2013
Messages
25
Thanks gpsguy for your help here man, appreciate it.

RAID 6 is basically RAIDZ2 with ZFS filesystem??

I physically installed them into my case. I have done nothing with them logically just yet.

I am not sure if I would have access to another machine, but I could look into that for sure.

Is there anyway of treating ada2, 3 and 4 like external drives so that I could remove them from the FreeNAS system then use a external hdd usb enclosure to transfer the data back???
 

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zipfel

Dabbler
Joined
Dec 16, 2013
Messages
25
Ok, so I decided to extend my volume with my additional 4 TB and remove the other hard drives from my system. When it comes time to upgrade to RAIDZ2 I will just copy as much data as I can to my old drives via ftp and hdd to usb interface from my laptop. It will be slower but its ok, I thought maybe there was a way just to house the HDDs within my FreeNAS system to make these transfers faster. Ah well.

Thanks again for your guidance
 

gpsguy

Active Member
Joined
Jan 22, 2012
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4,472
Sorry, I couldn't get back to you earlier.

Yes, you could have added the extra drives, either as individual volumes or as a stripe and then copied (copy, rsync, ...) the data internally. But, had you done it as a stripe, you'd need to have all 3 disks online along with your 6 new one's.

Assuming you don't have any backups yet, for your 2x4Tb drives - I'd start doing your backups now.
 
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