Setting up new raid. Need help!

[Lansing123]

Hey guys, I'm currently running a setup of 3x8TB disks that are unraided for PLEX, and some other services with TrueNAS. I'm planing on getting 5 more 8TB disks and I'm borrowing a 16TB disk to transfer most of my stuff from my current system. I cant bring everything but i can redownload alot of stuff. I will be making a RAIDZ2 with the 8x8TB disks i have in the system after.

My question is, will an external drive handle 16TB? Will it get too warm, should i cool it somehow? Also since my MOBO only has 8 SATA ports i will need to transfer the 16TB of data with USB3, which i get will take a while. Is it better to sacrifice the extra disk to transfer everything internally and wait for the RAIDZ expansion that is suppose to come in the future?

Also what would be the safest way to transfer the data? Do i clone the entire disk or copy over files with copy or some other program?

Best regards!

 

[NugentS]

A USB drive will get warm - but get a small deskfan to cool it down

 

[Etorix]

Hey guys, I'm currently running a setup of 3x8TB disks that are unraided for PLEX, and some other services with TrueNAS.

"unraided" = not currently ZFS, right?

Is it better to sacrifice the extra disk to transfer everything internally and wait for the RAIDZ expansion that is suppose to come in the future?

This feature has been supposed to "come in the future" for over three years…
It also comes with lots of caveats. Just make the pool as intended from the beginning.

Also what would be the safest way to transfer the data? Do i clone the entire disk or copy over files with copy or some other program?

If it's already ZFS, you can make a snapshot and replicate.
If not, just copy the files.

As alternatives to using a USB adapter you could attach the 16 TB to another computer and transfer over the network. Or create the 8-wide raidz2, offline and unplug one disk, put the 16 TB in its place, copy files to the degraded raidz2 pool (over SATA!), put back the 8th drive and let the pool resilver.

 

[Lansing123]

"unraided" = not currently ZFS, right?


This feature has been supposed to "come in the future" for over three years…
It also comes with lots of caveats. Just make the pool as intended from the beginning.


If it's already ZFS, you can make a snapshot and replicate.
If not, just copy the files.

As alternatives to using a USB adapter you could attach the 16 TB to another computer and transfer over the network. Or create the 8-wide raidz2, offline and unplug one disk, put the 16 TB in its place, copy files to the degraded raidz2 pool (over SATA!), put back the 8th drive and let the pool resilver.

Unraided but it is ZFS! I did not know about the snapshop and replicate feature, very good too know! Is there any way to tell how long a resilver of 8x8TB would take? I would "only" have about 16TB of data to resilver, as i understand ZFS skips "empty" data. Are we talking hours or days? And can the server be online during the re-silver or does that slow down the process?

That seems to be the best way too transfer over the files as it stands. I cant really transfer it over network since i would need to set up a new system that can read my ZFS disk.

 

[Etorix]

Unraided but it is ZFS! I did not know about the snapshop and replicate feature, very good too know! Is there any way to tell how long a resilver of 8x8TB would take? I would "only" have about 16TB of data to resilver, as i understand ZFS skips "empty" data. Are we talking hours or days?

I'guess rather hours than days. The dangerous phase, however, is the transfer from a non-redundant 16 TB drive; a degraded raidz2 still has one degree of redundancy. ("copies=2" could be an option if you have less than 8 TB of essential data and/or the excess can be downloaded again.)
Check feature flags between Unraid and TrueNAS, and make sure that TrueNAS can read the single-disk pool without issue before committing the old drives to the new pool.

And can the server be online during the re-silver or does that slow down the process?

Yes, the pool is available while resilvering—with the obvious performance hit.