Space Upgrade Advice

[Wally]

Hello,

I currently have my freenas setup with 2x3TB Red in mirror. I am now at 95%. I have purchase another 3TB Red and I also have spare a 2TB Black and 1TB Purple. I am very broke now and cant afford any more purchases for 9 months. I need advice on what I can do for more space. All HDD are installed in the machine already. There is also a 60GB SSD installed but not used. All HDD and the SSD range from brand new to 1 week old.

I had a thought, the 2tb and 1tb in raid0 to make a 3tb. Then the striped 3tb and the new 3tb red mirrored. Then the two mirrors striped for 6tb usable. Another note: I currently have 0 backups and in order to store 3tb worth, it will take multiple computers and laptops to handle the space but possible (2-3 days worth of transferring).

 

[DrKK]

Lord in Heaven, please preserve Wally.

FreeNAS (and ZFS) is a very poor solution for someone with random collections of variable-sized drives. Your proposed solution is horrifying to me, if I can even understand it, and in fact, I am not convinced you can do what you propose at all really (certainly not from the GUI).

What I would do in your spot is:

1) Pray
2) Immediately buy a 4TB external USB drive for around $140, and immediately back your pool up.
3) Take the 2TB black and 1TB purple and throw them in the garbage can
4) Take your (now) 3x3TB reds, and make a RAID-Z pool of the three drives, for a total of ~6TB usable.
5) Restore onto your pool from the 4TB external USB drive
6) Pray, especially because steps 4-5, if something goes wrong, your data is gone.

Maybe someone else will have a different idea, but I don't think you're getting out of this without spending another $150-$200 Canadian.

 

[DrKK]

Also, sir, if your pool is at 95%, then that is **MUCH TOO HIGH**, that is an *EMERGENCY* in ZFS. Your data is potentially at serious risk RIGHT NOW.

 

[DrKK]

Also, sir, if your pool is at 95%, then that is **MUCH TOO HIGH**, that is an *EMERGENCY* in ZFS. Your data is potentially at serious risk RIGHT NOW.

OK, I am told by some people in the IRC that it's not clear if data is at actual risk for overfull pools, BUT, I can assure you, we consider a 95% ZFS pool to be a very bad situation.

 

[Wally]

Hey DrKK,

Thanks for the advice; thats a good idea. I went through my data and cleaned up the junk or unneeded files. I am now down too 2.1TB (77%). I have a brand new external 2 TB drive, which I forgot I had. It is not enough but I can make it work for now. Now I am thinking I should shell out for another 3TB and do 4 drives and hopefully be set for a while. I am living off my visa at the moment while in school but I need this to be complete so I don't have to do all this again soon. Guess I will shell out another 180$ Canadian rupies.

Kind Regards,

Matthew W.

 

[tvsjr]

I'd hate to think how much power you're chewing through (plus the HVAC to cool the heat) runninng that Opteron beast to handle a pair of drives. You'd probably save enough money on the light bill to justify building up one of the common Dell/Lenovo/etc. microservers. Not to mention the reduction in size, noise, etc.

 

[Wally]

Hey everyone,

Got an update. Went with 4x3TB WD Red in raidz2. Took some figuring out but everything is happy now and I am transferring my files back from my backup. 2TB Black will be used as a 2nd backup with the external. 1TB Purple is going in the surveillance system for extra memory. Things are running great now but slower speeds. Before 100-110mb/s now 50mb/s up to 80mb/s for large files. I don't know if it is normal or not. Network is not the bottleneck.

tvsjr,

Probably a decent amount of power, I benefit from the heat though. In summer I will be venting in and out, outside. Size = large due to large case (Corsair 700D). Noise is high only because of fans on 12v only (I will be correcting this). Otherwise it is fine. I will use it for a year or so then upgrade. I am getting a new server tomorrow too.

Kind Regards,

Wally