Setting the RAID

[Elanges]

Im trying to setup a FreeNas, currently i have 3x 4TB drive which is full of data from my current pc. im confuse on which raid i should choose. at the moment i cant use mirrored cause all my drive are full of data and at the moment i no budget on getting additional drive. i wanted to have a setting like all individual drive, like if i remove drive A then the drive B and C still accessible. please somebody guide me.

 

[kdragon75]

This is not an option for FreeNAS. FreeNAS needs to reformat your drives. If your drives are full you would need to buy more disks.

Before you plan to buy more disks, let us know what type of system (motherboard, RAM, CPU, etc..) you are planning to use as you cant use any old hardware.

 

[Elanges]

Yes I am aware of it...my plan is to buy another drive then back up all data into it. Then I use the existing drive to FreeNAS. Later I copy back the data into the original disk..and do the same step to every drive.

currently planing to set up on
i3 / 16Gb ddr3 / gigabytes mobo / usb drive as boot

 

[kdragon75]

Looks like a small system you are building. Most people here will insist that you use ECC RAM. You didn't say what model of Gigabyte motherboard you are using but I'm guessing it does not support ECC. If you can't replace your data and can afford to buy a new motherboard and RAM (and possibly a new CPU because you didn't tell me what model i3 you are using), use ECC. Otherwise ZFS with bad memory is still safer than a crappy backup drive.

Before you start using the new drive look into burn in testing. This is EXTREMELY IMPORTANT! Do some searching on the forum, lots of good information. I would hate to see you move all of you data to the new drive and reformat the old ones just to find out the new drive died before you move everything back over.

Another note, ZFS is flexible but you cannot add one drive at a time. The minimum is the number of drives per vdev and that's a minimum of 2 if you want any kind of redundancy/parity (yes you want this). With a two drive vdev you lose half of your space, with three drives per vdev its number of drives - 1 (assuming RAIDz1). while you can add vdevs to grow your pool, it is far from ideal as the drives will not be balanced and performance may suffer.

1. Set up FreeNAS and install new drive.
2. Perform burn in testing for at least 24hr
3. Shut down the system for a few hours to let everything cool down to room temp.
4. Run another stress test for a few more hours.
5. If the drive shows ANY odd behavior sounds or errors, return it and get a new one. No errors are acceptable.
6. Copy old data to new drive while in FreeNAS, use your method of choice.
7. Shut down and connect your old drives to the FreeNAS server and configure your new pool, do not extend the one on the new drive.
8. Copy data back to the old drives again using you choice method (If it's just files I would use the console and just use the cp command)

This is admittedly a bit clumsy and depending on the amount of data may not work. (it all needs to fit on the new drive). But unless you plan to buy all new drives for the server its the way I would end up using.

Other may have other opinions or methods, I am not an expert in juggling data.

 

[Green750one]

Actually you can pretty much use any old hardware. FreeNAS is tolerant and agnostic of hw. That said, there are good reasons for more robust, server oriented, components.

Sent from my G3221 using Tapatalk

 

[kdragon75]

It does NEED to be 64bit. Sorry P4 fans.

 

[Elanges]

wow....looks like complicated :( all i wanted to do is create a simple nas machine which store my movies and photos which i can accessible through network. and a cloud style to store pics from my phone.

 

[kdragon75]

Welcome to the frustrating world of storage servers. :D

 

[Green750one]

wow....looks like complicated :( all i wanted to do is create a simple nas machine which store my movies and photos which i can accessible through network. and a cloud style to store pics from my phone.

You probably are better off using an off the shelf solution

Sent from my G3221 using Tapatalk

 

[kdragon75]

Agreed. If you are looking for dead simple look at Synology. You still can't just drop in your old drives but it would be easier to setup and manage than a FreeNAS server. It also includes all the options you are looking for with sharing photos etc..

With any type of RAID solution it is extremely important to understand your drive setup before you start saving data to it. Otherwise you will end up right back here wanting more space but no way to expand what you have without juggling your data and hoping nothing gets lost in the process. You want a way to grow your array either by replacing disks with larger ones or by adding more disks. Not all systems support both or either option. The big point here is that in storage, capacity planning is paramount to manageability and data safety.