Adding 2nd SATA Ctrl. and new drives

[marqus]

Hi all,

I have a question concerning NAS4free new-installation. I have a Freenas running for several years now. It is 0.7.2 now. I have 4x 1GB Samsung Sata @ promise tx4 300, booting from CF card via adapter @ IDE port.
Running fine, but I want to upgrade and start from scratch with the current NAS4free version.

Since disks are not getting any cheaper I cannot afford to buy several disks right now. What I want to to is the following:

1. I want to add a 2nd Promise TX4 to have the possibility to have a total of 8 disks. Right now I have the 4 disks on the first Promise and 2 more 1GB drives, that I could connect to the 2nd Promise.
Assuming, I create a raidZ1 (I want to backup seperately, therefore I need the space more that the security of Z2) with these 6 disks (6x 1GB), could I add 2 more disks later on, when there is money for new disks? Can I just integrate new disks to a running system without losing everything?

2. Can I on top of the challenge, add even larger disks (e.g. 3TB or 4TB) drives one after another, to have in the end 8x3TB=24TB pool size? Or do they have to be the same size? I will not add large drives all at once but one after another within maybe months or years, depending on the space needed...

Thanks alot for any help,
Marqus

[ChriZathens]

I am via my android now so I will give short answers:
1. No. For a raidz1 you need to add disks all together to have 7+1 for parity, thus approx. 7TB
2. Yes. If you manage to buy another two hdds now and create a raidz1, if later you buy 8x3TB hdds and replace the 1 TB ones, one at a time, after inserting the 8th 3 TB hddbyou will then have 7x3TB + 1 parity, thus approx 21TB ( or approx 28TB if you buy 4TB disks)

[marqus]

Hi again,

thx for the answer. Concerning point 2.

Cann I only use disks of the same size or would it be possible to build a raidz1 with 4x1TB and 2x2TB disks?

thanks

[raulfg3]

Is possible, but not recomended ( size of the raidZ1 is calculated using the small disk size).

Please have a look at: http://forums.freenas.org/showthread.ph ... hlight=ppt


PD: If you create 2 vdev in raidZ1, one 4x1Tb and other 4x2Tb in a Zpool you have 3Tb+6TB= 9TB pool = 7,8TB free and this have no problems, problems are only if you use 4x1TB+4x2Tb in the same vdev in this case you have only 6TB = 4,9 TB Free