Western Digital Advanced Format Drives?

[smccloud]

Ok, according to the FAQ I should read "NAS4Free with Western Digital Advanced Format Drive" before posting questions about using advanced format drives with ZFS. However the FAQ has nothing about it. Does it no longer matter?

The drives will be in a RAIDZ1 array being exported via NFS to an ESXi box so slow performance will hurt what I'm doing.

If I remember my specs right, I have 3 drives that are advanced format drives (for ones that will be in my NAS4Free box).

• WDC WD10EADS-65L - Not AF IIRC
• WDC WD10EACS-00Z - AF IIRC
• WDC WD10EARS-00Y - AF IIRC
• ST1000DL002-9TT1 - AF IIRC

Also, is it possible to expand a RAIDZ1 array? Basically, I will only have 3 of the 4 1TB drives available upon install since I have to copy data off the last one onto the new array before it can be used.

[Onichan]

I don't know what the FAQ said, but just make sure you don't enable unless you really do have 4K drives as I think enabling it with 512 drives will hurt performance while not enabling it with 4K drives will also hurt performance. To enable it you just need to make sure you check the "Enable Advanced Format" check-box when creating the vdev's.

Currently expanding vdevs is not possible and the only thing to grow a vdev itself is replacing each drive with larger ones till they are all replaced. You can also expand the pool by adding more vdevs, but the pool provides NO redundancy so the vdevs themselves must provide the redundancy.
Now it is possible to build a degraded pool for your scenario, but I think you would have to do it via CLI as last I heard it wasn't supported in the webgui. I don't know the procedure for created a degraded pool, but if you Google around about it you should find articles about it.

[smccloud]

Due to an oversight on my part, I have to put this on hold. Forgot that my current eSATA cards are PCIe and my Atom based system only has a PCI slot

Finding a PCI eSATA card that supports port multiplication is not easy to do

[Onichan]

Sounds like a bad idea to use eSATA, but I guess it shouldn't have any problems.

[smccloud]

Sounds like a bad idea to use eSATA, but I guess it shouldn't have any problems.

I have to since the case my Atom system is in only holds a single HD. Also, the drives are already in an eSATA tower. I'm not looking for super fast speed, just decently fast
I will never write to the drives myself, read yes but not write.

[daoyama]

Hi,

Finding a PCI eSATA card that supports port multiplication is not easy to do

I don't know your MB, but do you know mini-PCIe card? For example:
http://www.amazon.com/PM362-SATA-Mini-P ... B008I74468

[smccloud]

Hi,

Finding a PCI eSATA card that supports port multiplication is not easy to do

I don't know your MB, but do you know mini-PCIe card? For example:
http://www.amazon.com/PM362-SATA-Mini-P ... B008I74468

IIRC my motherboard does have a mini-PCIe card. Might look into that just to have 2 more SATA ports in my case in case I decide to modify it to mount more HDs.