increase storage capacity

[goudviske]

Hi all,

I should upgrade my home freeNAS installation some time soon, running low on disk space (amd board with 6x WD20EARS on board's SATA controller), currently configured as raidZ (single parity).
I've been thinking a lot about upgrading this, and my current idea would be to:
- add a SATA controller, thinking to add this: LSI Internal SATA/SAS 9211-8i
- add 8x 2TB hard drive, not sure about which ones, first idea was to add new WD greens in 2TB but apparently their durability has decreased significantly after Taiwan floods, so was thinking to maybe add WD red's or Seagate Barracuda ST series both in 2TB models.

The plan then is to:
- upgrade from freeNAS 7.3 to newest NAS4Free implementation
- run NAS4Free from a USB disk (currently running on old 2,5' IDE hard drive), which should be more durable
- install sata add on card & hard drives
- create a new raidZ2 array with the 7x2TB disks (using 7 out of 8 new drives)
- move all data from current raidZ array towards the new array
- format current WD20EARS using correct 4K alignment (not the case at the moment, it works properly though, but I'd like to have this sorted anyway)
- delete current raidZ array
- create new raidZ2 array from current 6 + 1 new hard drive
- expand first raidZ2 array with newly created raidZ2 array to have one volume

What I like about this is:
- to have one single volume
- double parity, never bad on consumer drives I think

What I'm not sure about:
- maybe it would be more interesting to add 8x 3TB instead of 8x 2TB, it significantly increases storage (also cost ofc), but this would mean I would have 2 separate volumes, with 3 TB disks I would get (unformated) 6x3 + 4x2 available, 6 TB more then with 2 TB drives
- which hard drives to add, recommendations would be very welcome

thoughts? other ideas? all very very welcome.
cheers

Steven

[raulfg3]

add 8x 2TB hard drive, not sure about which ones, first idea was to add new WD greens in 2TB but apparently their durability has decreased significantly after Taiwan floods, so was thinking to maybe add WD red's or Seagate Barracuda ST series both in 2TB models.

I personally disagree green WD, but some people use it, my suggest is WD RED or HGST disk (24x7).

run NAS4Free from a USB disk (currently running on old 2,5' IDE hard drive), which should be more durable

, please meditate if is a good idea. if you are thinking on a full install 2,5" IDE disk is the best idea ( if you are thinking on embeded install USB is a good idea too).

create new raidZ2 array from current 6 + 1 new hard drive
- expand first raidZ2 array with newly created raidZ2 array to have one volume

To do this, the raidZ2 must be a vdev NOT a zpool , so you can add to existing zpool.

to have one single volume

really not necesary, you can have 2 RaidZ2 pools and use each one to diferent data backup ( one for Video, other for download torrent, etc...).
To have a big Zpool that mix 2 types of disk ( 2TB & 1TB) is posible , but not recomended and you really don't improve benefits (well perhaps some troughput in Read & Write, but you must test to be sure).

You can test 2 separate pool and then destroy 1TB disk pool and add to existing one and do a new Test (as you plan), but if speed is not what you want, it's imposible to restore previos config ( once add a vdev to a pool you can't revert), so do several test without valuable data on disk or you can easy lose your data if do some step wrong.

[goudviske]

Thanks for your reply,
The USB installation I was talking about was embedded install should have mentioned that, just afraid my 2,5' IDE will die one day, since it's over 10 years old I think, and since USB is pretty robust, I thought I'd move into that direction. But if you're saying full install on 2,5 IDE is better, then I should consider not changing, and just buying a spare one maybe.

Regarding hard drives, WD reds are probably the better choice... in any case I'm going to buy a cold spare and have it close by just in case.

Regarding the zpool/vdev, was planning to do some testing on an esxi prior to implementing this ofc but you are right, maybe it's easier to just have 2 pools, this also makes them independent from each other, but something I still have to think about...