Do I have enough memory to grow my mirror array?

[provels]

Hi. I have an old server (so old, but was NOS when acquired a couple years ago, specs in sig) where I now have 2x2TB drives in a mirror set and it runs GREAT. This box is limited to 4GB RAM max, period. I'm considering growing the storage using 2x4TB drives (or larger if I find a great deal). Do you think I would have issues with ZFS? I only use CIFS/SMB and MiniDLNA and don't expect to use more features in the future. Thanks for reading!

EDIT - Also, would this box be a candidate for the 11.x releases going forward? Thanks again.

[ChriZathens]

I would first check if it supports disks larger than 2TB.

[provels]

Thanks for the reply. The specs for the box actually say max 2x500GB drives for a total of 1TB supported. I guess I'm in uncharted territory anyway. Maybe better to get rid of things I haven't looked at in a decade...

[ChriZathens]

Yeah..
A system which claims to support max 500GB disks may support up to 2TB disks..
Beyond that, I doubt it..

[arnoudbpolak]

Hi. I have an old server (so old, but was NOS when acquired a couple years ago, specs in sig) where I now have 2x2TB drives in a mirror set and it runs GREAT. This box is limited to 4GB RAM max, period. I'm considering growing the storage using 2x4TB drives (or larger if I find a great deal). Do you think I would have issues with ZFS? I only use CIFS/SMB and MiniDLNA and don't expect to use more features in the future. Thanks for reading!

EDIT - Also, would this box be a candidate for the 11.x releases going forward? Thanks again.

ZFS yes. Mirrored disk of 4TB no problem. I have 2GB Mem and multiple 2, 3 and 4TB mirrored disks running. Don't expect supreme throughput....

Sent from my Wileyfox Swift using Tapatalk

[provels]

Thanks for the replies, probably time for housekeeping. I need a truck more than a sports car anyway.

[renjithc]

One of my early Testbed HP Base ML G3/G4 Box had the issue - listed supporting upto 500GB - but worked fine upto 2TB not beyond that. Expand with 3x2TB ZFS1's if you have enough SATA slots else get one of those small SATA PCI Cards.

Now that I recollect isn't DL320 G3 a Rackmount with 2 x HDD Slots? Is'nt that like a really noisy Tractor trailer without the trailer for carrying your Backpack?

[provels]

Now that I recollect isn't DL320 G3 a Rackmount with 2 x HDD Slots? Is'nt that like a really noisy Tractor trailer without the trailer for carrying your Backpack?

Yes, it is, and burns 100w at idle. I think it has 7 5K RPM fans... I just power it on as needed for backups and DLNA. Just a hobby box anyway, and was vintage 2004 and NOS and not even powered up until about 3 years ago. It was free and has 4GB ECC, so good enough for what it is. Does about 80MB/s network. Just good fun. I think I'll stand with the 2GB drives for now. Maybe if I see a great deal, I'll buy a couple 4TB and try them out. Could always use them in another system.

[provels]

OK, now that I have found my Windows box has 1 drive in each of it's 2 mirrors failing :/ I have ordered 2 new 3TB WD Reds. I'd like to *try* to put the new 3TB's in the NAS and move the 2TB's from the NAS to the Windows box.
Is replacement of the 2TB drives in the NAS as easy as installing the 3TB drive, resilvering, replacing the second drive and resilvering again? The mirror array should grow automatically? Thanks for any replies.

EDIT - Looks like this is everything I need to know, *if* the larger >2TB drives will indeed work in my antique server. If they don't , they'll find home in my Windows box (along with the two new SSD's I bought for boot drives!).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AFKMssvpm9I

[provels]

As a followup, I installed one 3TB disk, resilvered, cleared config and imported and repeated. Expanded the pool at the end and everything appears to be online and happy. I'll do a scrub just to make sure no errors are apparent, but I think I'm good to go. Amazing that this 13 year-old box is working with 3TB drives.

[provels]

After a scrub, I see no errors (none before either). Anything I can watch for that might indicate this box cannot handle these >2TB drives? I know I'm pretty far out there as far as mixing 3TB drives with a 13 year-old server. Thanks for reading and any advice.

[Snufkin]

Anything I can watch for that might indicate this box cannot handle these >2TB drives?

Reboot your veteran machine and enter BIOS menu.
In case BIOS is able to recognize full capacity of your 3 TB HDD's than nothing to worry about.
P.S. I've seen veeery old PC based on Pentium III Slot 1 CPU, and motherboard BIOS was limited by 122 GB hard drives.
Ancient Promise PCI-IDE extension card completely solved above problem, and this couple worked for another 10 years.

[provels]

Anything I can watch for that might indicate this box cannot handle these >2TB drives?

Reboot your veteran machine and enter BIOS menu.

Thanks for the reply. I took a look at the BIOS, but it's different from your typical AMI/Award BIOS; it's an HP rack server. Not too much in there except things like managing NICs/ports, on-board RAID/disk cache (but just on/off (and both disabled), no disk info) and some processor options plus other stuff that doesn't apply. At POST the drive models are shown but not capacities. System log looks fine, no errors so I guess I'm OK (I guess, fingers crossed...).

Code: Select all

Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada1: quirks=0x1<4K>
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada1: 2861588MB (5860533168 512 byte sectors)
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada1: 150.000MB/s transfers (SATA, UDMA5, PIO 8192bytes)
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada1: Serial Number WD-WCC4N3JJPRNR
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada1: <WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82> ACS-2 ATA SATA 3.x device
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada1 at ata3 bus 0 scbus3 target 0 lun 0
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada0: quirks=0x1<4K>
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada0: 2861588MB (5860533168 512 byte sectors)
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada0: 150.000MB/s transfers (SATA, UDMA5, PIO 8192bytes)
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada0: Serial Number WD-WCC4N1TH824Z
Mar 24 10:46:45 	kernel: 	ada0: <WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0 82.00A82> ACS-2 ATA SATA 3.x device

Oh, and S.M.A.R.T. doesn't seem to have any trouble reading data and specs.

Code: Select all

=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family:     Western Digital Red
Device Model:     WDC WD30EFRX-68EUZN0
Serial Number:    WD-WCC4N3JJPRNR
LU WWN Device Id: 5 0014ee 2b909888b
Firmware Version: 82.00A82
User Capacity:    3,000,592,982,016 bytes [3.00 TB]
Sector Sizes:     512 bytes logical, 4096 bytes physical
Rotation Rate:    5400 rpm
Device is:        In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is:   ACS-2 (minor revision not indicated)
SATA Version is:  SATA 3.0, 6.0 Gb/s (current: 1.5 Gb/s)
Local Time is:    Fri Mar 24 10:46:57 2017 CDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled

=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION === SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED

General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status:  (0x00)	Offline data collection activity
					was never started.
					Auto Offline Data Collection: Disabled.
Self-test execution status:      (   0)	The previous self-test routine completed
					without error or no self-test has ever 
					been run.
Total time to complete Offline 
data collection: 		(38940) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: 			 (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
					Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
					Suspend Offline collection upon new
					command.
					Offline surface scan supported.
					Self-test supported.
					Conveyance Self-test supported.
					Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities:            (0x0003)	Saves SMART data before entering
					power-saving mode.
					Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability:        (0x01)	Error logging supported.
					General Purpose Logging supported.
Short self-test routine 
recommended polling time: 	 (   2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 ( 391) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: 	 (   5) minutes.
SCT capabilities: 	       (0x703d)	SCT Status supported.
					SCT Error Recovery Control supported.
					SCT Feature Control supported.
					SCT Data Table supported.

SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16 Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME          FLAG     VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE      UPDATED  WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
  1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate     0x002f   200   200   051    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  3 Spin_Up_Time            0x0027   181   181   021    Pre-fail  Always       -       5950
  4 Start_Stop_Count        0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       8
  5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct   0x0033   200   200   140    Pre-fail  Always       -       0
  7 Seek_Error_Rate         0x002e   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
  9 Power_On_Hours          0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       25
 10 Spin_Retry_Count        0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0032   100   253   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
 12 Power_Cycle_Count       0x0032   100   100   000    Old_age   Always       -       8
192 Power-Off_Retract_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       2
193 Load_Cycle_Count        0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       5
194 Temperature_Celsius     0x0022   127   119   000    Old_age   Always       -       23
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
197 Current_Pending_Sector  0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable   0x0030   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count    0x0032   200   200   000    Old_age   Always       -       0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate   0x0008   100   253   000    Old_age   Offline      -       0

SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged

SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1 No self-tests have been logged.  [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]

SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1  SPAN  MIN_LBA  MAX_LBA  CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
    1        0        0  Not_testing
    2        0        0  Not_testing
    3        0        0  Not_testing
    4        0        0  Not_testing
    5        0        0  Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
  After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.