Adding a 2nd hard drive

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jarge11

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I have a FreeNAS 9.2.1.6 setup with 1 x 4TB hard drive ZFS Volume. This drive already has 2TB+ data on it.

I would like to add a second 4TB hard drive for redundancy and set it up to clone/raid the 1st hard drive.

What is the process for doing this?
Do i use my computer's built in RAID service?
 

ian351c

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The answer to your first question lies here.

The answer to your second question will become apparent during your travel on the path to the answer of your first question.
The answer is NO.


Wax on, wax off...
 

jarge11

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OK I read the FreeNAS Guide. I understand vdev's and zpool's better.

I have an existing freenas box with 4TB hard drive that i want to replace with a HP Microserver that has a blank 4TB hard drive.

Should i add my existing 4TB hard drive to the HP Microserver and configure it with 2 vdev's and 2 zpool's? Is there a way to schedule a backup from 1 4TB drive to the other? That way if something is deleted i can get it back?

Or should i configure the server with Raid 1? If i do this, do i have to backup my existing 4TB drive first, then setup the freenas instance, then copy the data back over? Or can RAID somehow clone the hard drive from the existing to the blank one?
 

ian351c

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First a question: what is your boot device for your existing FreeNAS box?
 

ian351c

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In that case you have two choices. They both have their plusses and minuses, so in the end it probably doesn't matter which one you choose unless you see a good reason to go one way or the other. The first is to back up the data from your existing FreeNAS to the blank hard disk. There are several ways of doing this: plug it into a client machine and copy the data off the FreeNAS, plug it into the FreeNAS box and create a separate pool then copy the data, or even set up your new server with the blank drive and copy to data from your old server (either rsync, or mount the old share on the new server then copy). The other way to do it, would be to put the blank disk into your existing system and create a mirrored vdev. Assuming you have a "standard" setup (not using a RAID controller or anything like that) this should be super simple. After the mirror is done resilvering, you just move both drives and your USB stick over to the new server and it should "just work".

If it was me, I'd do the rsync. That way I don't ever have all my eggs in one basket. Set up the second server with FreeNAS, create your new pool with the blank disk, rsync (or find some other way to copy) the data over. Once you're satisfied you have all the data on the new system, destroy the pool on the old system (make sure you tell FreeNAS to delete all the data on the old disk) and put it in the new system. Then tell FreeNAS to create a mirror of the existing video with the new disk.
 

jarge11

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And when the new freeNAS creates a mirror using the new drive (with my data copied to it) to the old drive. Will it continue to mirror?

Is that similar to a software raid 1?

If I'm going to do that is it better to backup my data to a temporary portable drive. Delete the old 4TB drive in the old server. Setup the new FreeNAS server with 2 x 4TB's configured as hardware Raid1, then copy the data over from the portable?
 

ian351c

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Yes, it's just like software RAID. It's pretty much how ZFS works (everything in software). Using hardware RAID with ZFS is a Bad Idea(TM).

Performance won't really be different whether you restore from backup or rebuild the RAID. ZFS is smart enough not to let that impact performance.
 

jarge11

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OK. I have built my new FreeNAS 9.3. Rsync'd all my data from the old FreeNAS 4TB to the new FreeNAS4TB.
I have physically installed the old 4TB in to the new FreeNAS server.

How do i setup mirroring from here?
Do i create a new vol or exend the existing vol? And do i use Stripe or Spare??
 

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gpsguy

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None of the above.

You will need to use the command line in order to mirror the drive (after the fact). The commands have been posted and referenced several times in the past 40 days. Please search the forum.

If you have access to a virtual environment you might want to do a dry run first.


Sent from my phone
 
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