Henry Miller
Cadet
- Joined
- Dec 29, 2013
- Messages
- 9
I'm working on specing a freeNAS build, and I'm confused about the different RAID levels. I have some data that I'd rather not lose, so I know I want at least two drives redundancy. With the price of 3tb drives I can't see buying anything less (feel free to correct this if I'm wrong), and since I have space left in the 400gb drive in my current computer one ought to be plenty for the near future.
I'm just a small home: only my wife and I will use it. (I expect will die hardware long before any kids are old enough to be a factor)
I see two options:
Three disks, zfs mirrored. Pros is it uses less CPU and has much faster read performance. Cons - I'm not aware of any. If/when I'm running short of disk space I'll just buy 3 more drives and pop them in. If I'm still short - well the original drives are probably due for replacement anyway, so just upgrade them one at a time.
Five disks, zfs-z2 (If I read right 5 is a sweet spot - I'm willing to buy up to 7 drives if there is some advantage - but I don't want to waste money). Cons: more CPU used on write (insignificant), need to buy more drives upfront, slower reads if a disk fails, more disks so a failure is more likely. Pros: I'm not aware of any.
Obviously I'm leaning to the mirror configuration, but from reading the forums it looks like nearly everyone ends up with z2 in the long run after the real world downsides of the alternatives get them. Is there anything I'm missing here because I'm not seeing them.
I'm just a small home: only my wife and I will use it. (I expect will die hardware long before any kids are old enough to be a factor)
I see two options:
Three disks, zfs mirrored. Pros is it uses less CPU and has much faster read performance. Cons - I'm not aware of any. If/when I'm running short of disk space I'll just buy 3 more drives and pop them in. If I'm still short - well the original drives are probably due for replacement anyway, so just upgrade them one at a time.
Five disks, zfs-z2 (If I read right 5 is a sweet spot - I'm willing to buy up to 7 drives if there is some advantage - but I don't want to waste money). Cons: more CPU used on write (insignificant), need to buy more drives upfront, slower reads if a disk fails, more disks so a failure is more likely. Pros: I'm not aware of any.
Obviously I'm leaning to the mirror configuration, but from reading the forums it looks like nearly everyone ends up with z2 in the long run after the real world downsides of the alternatives get them. Is there anything I'm missing here because I'm not seeing them.