Trying to plan out new disc setup

[ladal1]

Hi, I'm planning expansion of my current NAS. What I'm trying to expand is my multi TB pool that I have. Currently it's just two 3TB (2.7 real capacity) and while still not full, I'm slowly but surely approaching 80% capacity. The data, while expendable, would (thanks to its current size) be PITA to remake so I decided that I would like to make it at least a little more secure. I have a chance for a pretty good deal on an 8TB seagate Exos, but getting more than one is currently out of my financial comfort zone. I had an idea about transferring all the data onto the 8TB drive and then running periodic backups on the current pool (which I can extend by 1TB, have a drive laying around because I ran out of space previously). Or the more normal idea just running them as mirror but I have no experience, so here I ask.

It might be a completely stupid idea so that's why I'm asking here - I always got a really good advice here
Thanks

 

[Spearfoot]

Hi, I'm planning expansion of my current NAS. What I'm trying to expand is my multi TB pool that I have. Currently it's just two 3TB (2.7 real capacity) and while still not full, I'm slowly but surely approaching 80% capacity. The data, while expendable, would (thanks to its current size) be PITA to remake so I decided that I would like to make it at least a little more secure. I have a chance for a pretty good deal on an 8TB seagate Exos, but getting more than one is currently out of my financial comfort zone. I had an idea about transferring all the data onto the 8TB drive and then running periodic backups on the current pool (which I can extend by 1TB, have a drive laying around because I ran out of space previously). Or the more normal idea just running them as mirror but I have no experience, so here I ask.

It might be a completely stupid idea so that's why I'm asking here - I always got a really good advice here
Thanks

Believe me, I understand very well about equipment purchases being "out of my financial comfort zone"! But there is no good way to expand your pool with a single disk.

What is your pool design? Are the two 3TB drives mirrored? If so, there are basically two ways to expand it:

• One is to replace each of the 3TB drives -- one at a time! -- with larger disks. You mentioned an 8TB disk; that would be a good start. But you would have to purchase another 8TB drive. You would end up with a pool made up of two 8TB mirrored disks.
• The other choice is add another vdev of two additional mirrored disks. These could be the 8TB disks you mentioned, or any other size you prefer.

How do you propose extending your current pool by 1TB? You can extend a pool with a single disk -- you seem to be contemplating adding a single 1TB disk -- but this is a very bad idea because you wouldn't have any redundancy. If the single 1TB disk were to fail you would lose all of your data!

Please give more details about your system and its pool layout, and the experts here will be able to give you better advice.

 

[ladal1]

Believe me, I understand very well about equipment purchases being "out of my financial comfort zone"! But there is no good way to expand your pool with a single disk.

What is your pool design? Are the two 3TB drives mirrored? If so, there are basically two ways to expand it:

• One is to replace each of the 3TB drives -- one at a time! -- with larger disks. You mentioned an 8TB disk; that would be a good start. But you would have to purchase another 8TB drive. You would end up with a pool made up of two 8TB mirrored disks.
• The other choice is add another vdev of two additional mirrored disks. These could be the 8TB disks you mentioned, or any other size you prefer.

How do you propose extending your current pool by 1TB? You can extend a pool with a single disk -- you seem to be contemplating adding a single 1TB disk -- but this is a very bad idea because you wouldn't have any redundancy. If the single 1TB disk were to fail you would lose all of your data!

Please give more details about your system and its pool layout, and the experts here will be able to give you better advice.

My current setup is two main storage pools, one for important data is two 4TB drives mirrored, which is still fine more than enough space left there. and two 3TB drives striped because I needed space more than security. It was set up when I needed just above 3 TB of storage and redundancy was really unnecessary, to regain the data would take less then a day of mostly unattended work.

I currently have one cold 1TB drive which I cannot add because I ran out of connections of board, but I have HBA already on its way, that's the 1TB I expected to be able to add.

The 8TB is not bought yet, just expecting it to be my best buy