ZFS on 9.2 removal of drive & Shrink?

[Leo Wski]

Ok, I've read a bunch of the posts - but while a few say - no just copy off and re-do....I need someone to be in my face saying - *No Stoopid! just start again*:

Scenario:
HP N54L, FreeNAS 9.3(sorry - not 9.2), 8GB Ram, originally 5x 2TB HDDs in RAID5 - total data held = 7TB.

Just managed to pry open the wallet to purchase 4x 6TB WD Red's - upgraded all slowly in the day by day, then borrowed an old drive for the 5th to be installed - thus giving me 24TB in RAID5.

The 5th drive now fails during restripe......I don't have enough $$$ to purchase a *new* 6TB as ive only just bought 4x.

So with around 7TB of data on a failed 5x Stripe of RAID5;
Can I shrink the ZFS to only encompass the remaining 4x 6TB of drives, while there is only 7TB of data stored?

I really don't wanna have to somehow mount 5x drives in another system, boot to a fresh FreeNAS and network transfer over the 7tb to a clean RAID5 setup on 4x 6TB's - really dont wanna.........help me?

Many thanks for reading my rant. ;)

 

[depasseg]

You aren't using Hardware RAID are you? I'm assuming you meant RAID-Z2 (not RAID5). No, you cannot shrink ZFS.

Can you explain what you did with the 5th disk? Was it part of a RAIDZ2 pool? Or did you add it after you made the 4 disk pool?

 

[Leo Wski]

You aren't using Hardware RAID are you? I'm assuming you meant RAID-Z2 (not RAID5). No, you cannot shrink ZFS.

Can you explain what you did with the 5th disk? Was it part of a RAIDZ2 pool? Or did you add it after you made the 4 disk pool?

Thx for replying,

no...no hardware raid. I over a week slowly replaced every 2tb with a 6tb letting the system restripe to the new disk; Failed out a 2tb, then installed a 6tb and told it to replace disk.

I *thought* i only had 4x drives in my pool - so I petitioned the Mrs so that I could buy 4x - but I have 5x - so I had to borrow a mates old used 6tb that when it was finally added and the original 2TB was replaced by it - that failed during the restripe to the now 5th 6TB disk.

While I would love to purchase another 6tb drive, I dont have the $$$ currently - and so I was hoping that I could just *tell* FreeNAS that the ZFS pool is only 4x 6tb's big now as there is only 7TB of data on it.....but totally as long as im sunk, ive got weeks worth of resetting up a new freenas install, plug in the original 2TB drives, then get them to export out either via network or to one of the 6tb drives out of my pool, start up a fresh ZFS pool with 3x 6TB's copy the 4th 6tb's data across then add in the 4th 6tb into the pool, thus giving me 18TB.......or if possible I could have just shrunk the ZFS pool if that was possible.

Ultimately I have around 15 mins a day to actually play, configure, process and do all this....my problem I guess, no time for toys anymore!!

Grrrrr.

 

[depasseg]

Ah. Ok. Now I understand. Can you figure out a way to hook those drives up to the same machine (even temporarily)? I have a how to written to help move data and it's a lot faster when the 2 pools are both connected directly.

 

[Leo Wski]

Ah. Ok. Now I understand. Can you figure out a way to hook those drives up to the same machine (even temporarily)? I have a how to written to help move data and it's a lot faster when the 2 pools are both connected directly.

It would be nice -= but the N54L doesn't have anymore SATA ports, and while I've got a few docks to go USB3 & esata - not enough to migrate from one to another unfortunately.
I'm checking space on a server with a Mate (who loaned me the dud drive!) that he has and could house and mount the drives so that I could pop the 4th 6tb and just copy it all to - rather then setting up a fresh system.

Reminder for all whom read this post - remember when upgrading to check how many drives you actually have!!!!
...and DONT borrow any!!


Thanks for your time in reading my post