How are my disks automatically setup as?

[hendry]

Hi! I'm new to FreeNAS, though I am quite comfortable on the CLI, so I am wondering if FreeNAS is right for me.

I assume it:
* will sanely manage my data. Tbh uptime isn't important to me. I have 2x4TB disks and if I run out of 3.6TB of whatever (i take a lot of 4K footage), I was wondering if I could tweak it to switch off mirroring (assuming I have cloud S3 mirroring working satisfactorily)
* If I died suddenly, my family could recover our photo/video collection
* it will keep upto date so I don't have to worry about updating the software
* the share will work painlessly on my MBP with I edit videos with in FCPX
* if I took one of the disks out (guess the machine would have to be powered down?), transported it somewhere and put them in another machine, i would be able to view my data. i.e. looking to probably send a disk to my parents every year and I want this process to be painless.

So as you can see from my install video https://youtu.be/mm8cpxtaodw I was a bit underwhelmed that the Web UI couldn't tell me satisfactorily how my disks were setup. E.g.
* what FS?
* what raid configuration?
* what encryption?

So I hope my assumptions/use cases can be met, and I'm just being an idiot around the Web UI. Otherwise I guess I'll probably try tweak FreeBSD and learn all about Z-raid et al, which I am not very enthusiastic about doing.

 

[danb35]

I have 2x4TB disks and if I run out of 3.6TB of whatever (i take a lot of 4K footage), I was wondering if I could tweak it to switch off mirroring (assuming I have cloud S3 mirroring working satisfactorily)

No, a mirror is a mirror, and FreeNAS won't change that on its own. It's possible to manually break the mirror, and then add that second disk back to the pool as a stripe. I doubt any of us here would recommend it, but it's possible--though you'd need to use the CLI to do it.

If I died suddenly, my family could recover our photo/video collection

That will depend on the combination of how tech-savvy they are and how much information you leave them.

it will keep upto date so I don't have to worry about updating the software

FreeNAS does not update itself automatically, but it will notify you when updates are ready. Installing the updates takes a couple of clicks in the GUI.

if I took one of the disks out (guess the machine would have to be powered down?), transported it somewhere and put them in another machine, i would be able to view my data.

Should be able to do this, though it wouldn't be recommended. The other machine would need to be able to read ZFS, which pretty much every OS in the world except Windows can.

what FS?

ZFS.

what raid configuration?

Whatever RAID configuration you told it to use.

what encryption?

None unless you told it to encrypt.

 

[sretalla]

You can see the setup of your disks under storage, clicking on the first-level item and then the status button at the bottom.

FreeNAS only uses ZFS, so no need for it to report that.

You can see it all in the CLI by doing a zpool status.

 

[hendry]

None unless you told it to encrypt.

Sorry, I assumed it was encrypted since there was some encrypted message pop up whilst using the Wizard.

I posted another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fvc6asZmxM and I have some further questions.

Why are there two partitions? https://youtu.be/5fvc6asZmxM?t=207

Why don't network shares appear in the Finder browser? https://youtu.be/5fvc6asZmxM?t=302

What are those .apple & .mac dotfiles? https://youtu.be/5fvc6asZmxM?t=563

How do you resolve the critical notification when both drives are OK without rebooting FreeNAS? https://youtu.be/5fvc6asZmxM?t=594

I manually had to clear the error and reboot?! https://youtu.be/5fvc6asZmxM?t=662

 

[danb35]

I posted another video https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5fvc6asZmxM and I have some further questions.

I'm not going to watch a 15-minute video to figure out what you're talking about, especially when you can post screen shots and a much clearer explanation of your question in the post yourself. Aside from the time element, putting everything into your post here (including hosting pictures here--don't use links to imgur and other sites) means that the context of your post isn't going to go away at some later time. But in the meantime:

Why are there two partitions?

FreeNAS creates a partition for swap on each disk, as explained in the manual.

How do you resolve the critical notification

If the condition that caused the notification has been resolved, you can clear the notification by unchecking it. Click the flashing red light in the GUI, uncheck the notification in question, close the window. The notifications do not go away on their own, even if the underlying condition has been resolved.

 

[hendry]

Took me hours to take make the video and I do link to the exact time for context.