Hi all,
I am thinking of moving away from my old server based on Win 8 towards FreeNas. I have loads of questions but I hope that most can be answered through trawling the forums. There are a few that I cannot seem to find around ZFS and Raid Mirror set-ups.
Questions:
- If I create a raid mirror (raid-1) with ZFS will I still get to take advantage of continuous integrity checking, error checking and auto repair or does this only come when using Raid Z1/2/3 ?
- If I use Raid mirror and my motherboard/PSU etc dies destroying one of the disks at the same time can I still access my data from the good drive using FreeNAS / Ubuntu on a different computer?
- I have heard that data recovery tools are few and far between with ZFS. The only concern I have is if I were to do something stupid like delete a partition table on a drive that I was trying to recover from, are there tools to recover from this sort of issue if I am only using Raid Mirror?
- Based on the info below on my set-up, is ZFS worth it, or should I stick with another file system?
More data on my current set-up and requirements is below.
Thanks for your help.
Current Server Set-up:
Tier 1 Storage - Essential Data (Files, Photos, Music)
- 1 TB of data
- 1TB drive with nightly backup to another 1TB drive in the same box every night (not a great solution, but reduces the risk that both disks fail at the same time and reduces wear on 2nd drive)
- Auto sync to my primary workstation daily
- CrashPlan backup enabled
Tier 2 Storage - Normal Data (Video Media)
- 5TB of storage
- 3 TB drive with nightly backup to another 3TB drive
- 2TB drive with nightly backup to another 2 TB drive
(One reason for moving away from Windows is slow transfer speeds, I guess Raid Mirror for these drives would give me a super quick data access?)
Tier 3 Storage - Working Data (In Process Downloads)
- 0.5TB drive with no backup (if I lose the data I do not care that much)
I am thinking of moving away from my old server based on Win 8 towards FreeNas. I have loads of questions but I hope that most can be answered through trawling the forums. There are a few that I cannot seem to find around ZFS and Raid Mirror set-ups.
Questions:
- If I create a raid mirror (raid-1) with ZFS will I still get to take advantage of continuous integrity checking, error checking and auto repair or does this only come when using Raid Z1/2/3 ?
- If I use Raid mirror and my motherboard/PSU etc dies destroying one of the disks at the same time can I still access my data from the good drive using FreeNAS / Ubuntu on a different computer?
- I have heard that data recovery tools are few and far between with ZFS. The only concern I have is if I were to do something stupid like delete a partition table on a drive that I was trying to recover from, are there tools to recover from this sort of issue if I am only using Raid Mirror?
- Based on the info below on my set-up, is ZFS worth it, or should I stick with another file system?
More data on my current set-up and requirements is below.
Thanks for your help.
Current Server Set-up:
Tier 1 Storage - Essential Data (Files, Photos, Music)
- 1 TB of data
- 1TB drive with nightly backup to another 1TB drive in the same box every night (not a great solution, but reduces the risk that both disks fail at the same time and reduces wear on 2nd drive)
- Auto sync to my primary workstation daily
- CrashPlan backup enabled
Tier 2 Storage - Normal Data (Video Media)
- 5TB of storage
- 3 TB drive with nightly backup to another 3TB drive
- 2TB drive with nightly backup to another 2 TB drive
(One reason for moving away from Windows is slow transfer speeds, I guess Raid Mirror for these drives would give me a super quick data access?)
Tier 3 Storage - Working Data (In Process Downloads)
- 0.5TB drive with no backup (if I lose the data I do not care that much)