Add a Hard Drive - Am I Understanding - Clarify My Options

[NowhereTech]

Hi Everyone,

Scenario;
Been running 2 FreeNAS boxes for about 4 months now. Current setup is 4 x 2TB WD Red, ZFS2. Recently, one of the drives began reporting errors (via email/SMART). Replaced the drive as per the manual, Resilvered and everything is happy.

Now, received the replacement drive back from warranty and thought about adding it to the NAS. Read for three days, manual, found the PPTX guide, read forums and still am not clear.

It seems I cannot just add this drive to the existing Volume/ZPool/VDev? Correct?

Adding a VDev is NOT an option as it is a single drive. Correct?

Read on replacing drives to larger ones (Expanding a ZPool) one at time which is fine if you want to retain an existing ZPool config and just increase the drive capacity. i.e. My 4 x 2TB replace one at time to 4 x 4TB whilst retaining the ZPool, increase my storage. Correct? But not an option in my scenario, Correct?

So, it would seem my only real option is to do a full backup, which gets done to a separate drive anyway, 'break' the whole ZF2 volume, and redo with 5 drives instead of the existing 4.

Do I have any other options besides stripe, log, cache or spare which are not what I want?

Thanks... Yep I'm a noob.

 

[Bidule0hm]

You can add a single drive BUT it'll be in it's own vdev (you can't expand a vdev but only a pool) so if it fail (and it will sooner or later...) you lose the pool.

So, it would seem my only real option is to do a full backup, which gets done to a separate drive anyway, 'break' the whole ZF2 volume, and redo with 5 drives instead of the existing 4.

Exactly that ;)

 

[NowhereTech]

Haa! Maybe I did understand something.

Thanks for the reply and clarification.

 

[DrKK]

Sir,

The correct procedure is to take the RMA'd drive, and put it on the shelf as a "cold spare". Don't try to use it. :)

 

[Z300M]

Sir,

The correct procedure is to take the RMA'd drive, and put it on the shelf as a "cold spare". Don't try to use it. :)

Why? Shouldn't it be installed in the (or in a) machine and given a good workout before assuming that it will work when needed?

 

[DrKK]

Why? Shouldn't it be installed in the (or in a) machine and given a good workout before assuming that it will work when needed?

Pretty sure you're purposefully misunderstanding me.

In case anyone else is similarly rigid in their interpretation of words, what I meant to say was:

"I would recommend not putting the RMA drive into service just yet in your pool. Firing it up and making sure it is working and passes a SMART test makes some sense; but following that, I would place it on the shelf as a 'cold spare' so that the next time a drive drops in your main pool you can replace it almost immediately, minimizing the threat to your pool".

 

[Z300M]

Pretty sure you're purposefully misunderstanding me.

In case anyone else is similarly rigid in their interpretation of words, what I meant to say was:

"I would recommend not putting the RMA drive into service just yet in your pool. Firing it up and making sure it is working and passes a SMART test makes some sense; but following that, I would place it on the shelf as a 'cold spare' so that the next time a drive drops in your main pool you can replace it almost immediately, minimizing the threat to your pool".

OK, That's better. What you meant was not what you wrote previously, and somebody might have assumed that you meant what you wrote. I work with words and tend to assume that people mean what they write.