Planning for future growth

[ulvegrip]

I have this plan of building this server with:

Dell Power Edge 2800
16GB RAM
SUPERMICRO SERIAL ATA 8 PORT PCI - AOC-SAT2-MV8
8x2TB Brracuda ST2000DM001.

The initial budget will only allow for 4 disks so I'm thinking that I would make 8 partitions on the 4 disks and add each of them into a raidz2 setup.
When the next 4 disks come online I would:
1. Migrate one partition of each initial drive onto a full 2TB disk
2. Take each remaining 1TB partition offline and replace it with the full disk instead.

In theory moving from 6 to 12TB without having to deal with having the pool streching over two identical raidz2.
I don't like the idea of having just one parity disk and having 4 out of 8 disks as parity by just adding a 4x2TB raidz2 to the first one is not a pleasing idea either.
I know that I would in reallity have just one parity disk until the next batch of disks is online but that is something I would have to live with since it's not a permanent solution.

I cant for the life of me find the article/text/forum/wiki where I found this tip about a year ago so I ask you:
* Is this possible?
* Is this realistic?
* Is this a waste of time?



TLDR
Can a raidz2 be build from 8x1GB partitions on 4xTB disks and then be merged onto 8x2TB disks thus growing from 6TB to 12TB?

[raulfg3]

regarles if possible, ZFS works better if you use entire disk ( Do not do partitions on disk or you have a lot of problems in future to admin the pool).

try to use other aproach:
use 4 Disk in RaidZ1, and when done ( when need more space) add other 4 disk in raidZ1, initially you have lost one disk in parity, and at the end you use 2 disk in parity.

Yes, raidz1 is less secure that RaidZ2, but for home user must be enought ( for SOHO or enterprise RaidZ2 is adequate).

[rostreich]

It is possible,but like raulfg3 said, use full disks. ALWAYS! It will save you headache when a disk dies.

Raidz1 should be enough for home usage, when you have another backup anywhere. If you really want Raidz2 (which is very secure, when used with complete disks!) then it's worth the waiting for money to buy all of the disks at once!