ZFS pool and non-ZFS single disks in same box

[Bomber]

I'm setting a new FreeNAS box after many years of using a WD Sharespace but the controller has died twice, the first time under warranty (which saw a brand new box and hard drives being supplied as a replacement) and the second box just recently some 5 years after it being provided by WD. I did lots of reading first and have chosen to implement FreeNAS as the best compromise *for me* of hardware price, performance, data security and ease of use; choosing not to be dependent on a hardware vendor in the future even though it will be a steep learning curve. I've been in the IT game one way or another since 1981, so I know my way around systems but I've probably become a jack of all trades and a master of none compared to many of you folk. The "C" word (compromise) has been a driving factor so I know there are ways that my hardware is less than optimal according to many here but I know enough to minimise the risks and to to mitigate the risks should a pool fail. I am a home user, looking to use the NAS as a storage pool and local PC backup device. Data write will be intensive at times but irregular. Apart from my FLACs and a few videos, reads will be almost non existent. Basically documents and photos (lots of photos) will be stored on the local PC. Docs will edited on the PC, remain on the PC for daily access purposes and be backed up to NAS as and when required. Photos, the edit files and the final output will be stored on the PC drive until space becomes an issue but backed up to NAS as and when required and the NAS becomes the "only" copy only when no longer actively required on the PC. It's when the photos are backed up (the last trip away was 11 weeks and some 7,000 "bad bird photos" came home to be sorted and pruned) and it is when these are copied from the PC to the NAS that writes will be intensive.

So, the issue then is how to back up the NAS's FreeNAS Z2 pool...

The box I'm building will house 7 drives (for now, 8 later on). 6 of those drives (4x2TB and 2x4TB, the 4x2TB being replaced progressively until pool is 6x4TB) will be set up as a Z2 pool and shared with a Mac and several PCs (which may only run Home in the future so NFS may not be advisable). The 7th (and ultimately 8th) will be the backup drive/s and is a 4TB WD Red. The case is hot swappable, so the plan is that when we leave the house for extended periods the NAS will be removed from the power (to protect the pool), the backup drive/s will be extracted, popped in a suitable portable USB carry case and left at different off site locations.

I want the backup drives to be readable without putting them back in to a FreeNAS / ZFS box, either by EXT4, UFS or similar as they have important "in case of emergency" information our children may need to access. They need to be able to simply plug in the "external hard drive" and find the information in a hurry.

I have read what I can of the manual but haven't been able to find what I'm after: "How do I set up a drive which is not allocated to the primary pool but is simply a different share with full read / write guest privileges and which can be independent of FreeNAS?". If a detailed explanation exists in the documentation a brief comment and a redirect to that spot will be fine :). Basically, what I need to know is:
*What are my options for non-ZFS drives with FreeNAS?
*How to set up the drive so that it is readable without being in the NAS?
*How to access the drive while it is still in the NAS.

Thanks for getting to the end, and for being gentle in your answer!

 

[Linkman]

AFAIK, current FreeNAS versions only support ZFS for read/write, so you can have a single disk vdev and pool that's ZFS. But if you want to be able to pull the drive and read it on a system without ZFS, you can't. Best bet is to put that drive into another computer and do the backups over the network to whatever disc format you want.

 

[Bomber]

OK, so if that's correct, I presume I have multiple pools and that's ok - one with 6 disks and one with 1 disk?

 

[Ericloewe]

OK, so if that's correct, I presume I have multiple pools and that's ok - one with 6 disks and one with 1 disk?

Of course it's okay, it'd be rather stupid to limit a filesystem to one instance per system.

 

[Linkman]

Yes, what Eric said. What I tried to say but poorly, you can have a pool of a single disc vdev.