How should I configure my drives?

[NorSer]

Hello Everyone,

I have a few new drives that I'll be installing into my system over the weekend and I was wondering what would be the best way to configure them in FreeNAS.

I'm going to upgrade from my USB boot drive to a 120GB SSD. But then I have 3 240GB SSD drives and 1 2TB HDD. I have a lot of data that I just keep as storage, but not a lot of space being used for tasks or other processes.

I want to have some redundancy in the system but also optimize the total storage space. Any thoughts or ideas would be very helpful.

Thanks,

 

[Etorix]

You cannot have redundancy with just one HDD! And three small SSD won't bring you very far.

 

[joeschmuck]

I'm going to upgrade from my USB boot drive to a 120GB SSD.

That is a good move.

But then I have 3 240GB SSD drives and 1 2TB HDD. I have a lot of data that I just keep as storage, but not a lot of space being used for tasks or other processes.

Are these all part of the "new drives" you have, meaning that you have other hard drives already part of a NAS system? We need to see the big picture here to give you good advice.

I want to have some redundancy in the system but also optimize the total storage space.

Assuming that you are just starting out here then you should read up on how FreeNAS/TrueNAS and ZFS vdevs are created and used. My advice is to run a virtual machine (VM) of TrueNAS 12.0-U1 and play with the interface, create a few drives and figure out what you can and cannot do. Read the docs.

If this is all the hardware you have to start with AND you have at a minimum of 8GB RAM (16GB RAM preferred) then I would create a RAIDZ2 using all four drives (three 240GB + one 2TB) but your capacity will be roughly 430GB but it will be redundant. Also your 2TB drive cannot be an SMR drive (you did not provide make/model numbers). Then you can replace the three SSDs with 2TB hard drives and once the last drive is replaced you will then have approximately 3.5TB or redundant storage. The key word here is redundant.

Also, you should post all the hardware you are using. If it's substandard then you will likely hear feedback from folks telling you that, don't take offense to it, we generally tell you straight and often tell you why it could be garbage. If you are looking just to experiment with FreeNAS/TrueNAS then I'd just take the system and play around with it. Eventually you will upgrade to good hardware if you want a safe place to put your data.

Good Luck and Welcome to the Forums.