Recover pools from previous freeNAS machine

[KenwoodFox]

Still recovering from a failed USB drive, all other 8 drives (save for one SATA drive that is being a little picky about when it responds to read commands) are functioning and should have the data from the previous installation.
My backup .tar file doesn't seem to work, I can't seem to get the machine to restore using it, is there another way I can add in my pools that used to exist and keep their data?

And hey, USB drives are incredibly awkward on these machines I've been using, its a wonder they're able to understand that a USB drive could be booted off of for anything but diagnostics, is using a USB drive really all that good? I hear it all the time that freeNAS should be booted off a USB but why not use an SSD on SATA?

 

[rvassar]

And hey, USB drives are incredibly awkward on these machines I've been using, its a wonder they're able to understand that a USB drive could be booted off of for anything but diagnostics, is using a USB drive really all that good? I hear it all the time that freeNAS should be booted off a USB but why not use an SSD on SATA?

You certainly haven't heard that from me! USB boot was a rolling train wreck for me... I'm currently booting off a pair of 60Gb SATA attach SSD's, bought on sale for ~$20 each...

It should be possible to simply import the pool as is. You'll need to recreate the shares, jails, etc... But the data should be there if you have all the devices.

 

[KenwoodFox]

You certainly haven't heard that from me! USB boot was a rolling train wreck for me... I'm currently booting off a pair of 60Gb SATA attach SSD's, bought on sale for ~$20 each...

It should be possible to simply import the pool as is. You'll need to recreate the shares, jails, etc... But the data should be there is you have all the devices.

Thanks so much! This is wonderful news! I think im going to ebay myself some SSDs tonight!

 

[Chris Moore]

I hear it all the time that freeNAS should be booted off a USB but why not use an SSD on SATA?

That is outdated info that just used to be true and only then because people wanted to save the SATA ports for hard drives.

Please review this guidance:

Hardware Requirements
http://www.freenas.org/hardware-requirements/

SSDs are the current recommended boot media. USB is only an option and not a good one.

 

[Chris Moore]

Thanks so much! This is wonderful news! I think im going to ebay myself some SSDs tonight!

I have been using a pair of mechanical disks in mirrored pairs in both of my FreeNAS systems for almost three years now with zero problems.
https://www.ebay.com/itm/Hitachi-Tr...-HTS541640J9SA00-SATA-Hard-Drive/264244921757

They are inexpensive and you can monitor their health and troubleshoot them just like any other hard disk drive.