Need Advice on Drive Config on New Build

[FleurDeLis425]

I am starting a new free NAS box and I am trying to figure out the best way to configure the drives. I plan to buy 3TB ones. My throught process is one of the following:

1) Buy 2 at a time (starting with 4) and expand as I need by creating mirrored vdevs for each drive and putting them in the zpool.
2) Buy more drives up front, such as 5 or 6, and put them in a raid-z. My concern about that is the rebuild time of larger drives and I am not sure I will fill up those drives as fast. Thus ending up with drives that will wear out before being filled.

Any insight or advice is welcomed.

Thanks.

 

[FleurDeLis425]

Currently thinking 4 x 3TB in Raid 10 or 6x 2TB in Raid-Z2.

 

[cyberjock]

Most people are better of with overbuilding the system from the start. If you build your system properly and do proper maintenance on your pools and such you should have a system that can last quite a while.

 

[FleurDeLis425]

Understood. But is there any recommendation on Drive Size vs. Configuration? If I got 6 3TB drives, is it better to put them in RAID 10 or RAID-Z2?

 

[ZFS Noob]

I guess it depends on your needs. RAID10 will have ~ 3x the IOPS, but the RAIDZ2 will have 3TB more capacity and can withstand the failure of any 2 drives. RAID10 will be easier to expand as well.