replication of important data only

[bar1]

Hi Everyone,
so over the weekend i decided to finally give freenas a try and so far i am loving it!!!

currently i am not running raid, have an 8TB hard drive and a 2TB hard drive.
also have a 4TB hard drive with bad sectors, but not planning on using it for now.

So, I have about 2TB of data that i can not afford to loose,photos, videos...

Will it be possible to create a 2TB pool on the 8TB hard drive and set it to mirror or replicate to the 2TB drive?

 

[MatthewSteinhoff]

No. Not the way you're asking.

You can mix drive sizes in FreeNAS as a mirrored set of drives.

So, a 2TB plus an 8TB will give you 2TB of storage protected from a single drive failure.

When you have the money, buy another 8TB drive and swap it for the 2TB drive and you've got 8TB of storage. You could even swap the 2TB drive for a 4TB or 6TB drive and get that much space if cost is a concern.

Cheers,
Matt

 

[bar1]

but can i choose what datasets to protect?

 

[bar1]

and if i select 3 copies (for example), is it possible to choose the copies will be on a separate drive?
because that will be ideal

 

[Kevin Horton]

You could create two pools, one using just the 8 TB drive, and a second using the 2 TB drive. On the 8 TB drive, put all the important data in one dataset. Put the less important data in other datasets.

Set up periodic snapshots on the important dataset, and then set up replication of that dataset to the pool on the 2 TB drive. This will ensure that the important data ends up in two places (with a bit of a delay).

This should only be considered an interim solution, as there are myriad benefits to using pools based on either mirrors or RAIDZ.

 

[bar1]

You could create two pools, one using just the 8 TB drive, and a second using the 2 TB drive. On the 8 TB drive, put all the important data in one dataset. Put the less important data in other datasets.

Set up periodic snapshots on the important dataset, and then set up replication of that dataset to the pool on the 2 TB drive. This will ensure that the important data ends up in two places (with a bit of a delay).

This should only be considered an interim solution, as there are myriad benefits to using pools based on either mirrors or RAIDZ.

thanks, thats exactly what i am trying to achieve.

Regarding my 4TB with bad sectors...i am considering using it for none critical data, and maybe backups before uploading to the cloud.


any thoughts on that?

 

[Kevin Horton]

thanks, thats exactly what i am trying to achieve.

Regarding my 4TB with bad sectors...i am considering using it for none critical data, and maybe backups before uploading to the cloud.


any thoughts on that?

You might get away with using that drive IF the situation is stable, and the number of bad sectors is not increasing. But, there is a high probability that the drive is heading towards failure, and you would lose data.

If additional sectors start to fail, that would also likely lead to the NAS hanging up while it waits for the drive to respond (this situation isn't normally a problem, in the more typical situation where the pool has redundant drives, and the drives have TLER enabled).

Bottom line - only use this drive if you don't care about your data, and you don't care if the NAS has poor performance.