Forced JBOD?

[suprastan]

So I have been tired of having 12 drives in 3 USB enclosures on my desk. It just ugly.. So I decided to purchase everything I need to move them into my basement and run freenas..

I am running a plex server with 6 x 8tb drives.. I just purchased 2 10tb reds to start the migration..

But I am wondering how I should do this.. I would love redundancy but really not sure how to accomplish it..

Anyway any advise would be greatly appreciated..

And no I can not buy another 5 10tb drives, and raid it then copy to it lol

 

[Chris Moore]

12 drives in 3 USB enclosures on my desk.

This isn't good for FreeNAS.

What are you asking for, advice on what hardware to use for a FreeNAS build? If you already have

I am running a plex server with 6 x 8tb drives

Are they in some kind of RAID set? Are you looking to add additional storage or replace this with something different?

I just purchased 2 10tb reds to start the migration..

How are you planning to use these parts?

If you just want someone to tell you what to do, you have to give us some idea what you want to do or our guidance may not get you where you want to be.

And no I can not buy another 5 10tb drives, and raid it then copy to it lol

If you can give some kind of budget limit, I can try to put together a suggestion that will be affordable.

 

[suprastan]

Thanks for the reply.. Shocked how fast that was :)

So I ordered a Silverstone CS380 case which has 8 3.5" bays.. I alreeady have a i5 with mb, power supply and 16gb ram.. I plan to add the HDD's into this and run it I assume as a JBOD. With Freenas and plex installed.

So I am wondering what the best options for this are right now. I assume I can just do JBOD, but can I make 1 directory like Movies in Freenas, and then take the movies folders from all of the drives and have them listed in 1?

I know I cant have any redundancy, as I dont have enough space to hold all of my data during a raid setup..

 

[Chris Moore]

So I ordered a Silverstone CS380 case which has 8 3.5" bays.. I alreeady have a i5 with mb, power supply and 16gb ram

Sounds like you jumped the gun a bit. Hopefully you can still send those back for a refund because they are all sub-optimal choices.

I know I can't have any redundancy, as I don't have enough space to hold all of my data during a raid setup..

Here is the thing, I think you are misunderstanding how FreeNAS works. FreeNAS is an appliance built on a Unix operating system and it uses a file system called ZFS. It is so different from what you are likely accustomed to, if you have used Windows, that it may take a little time to learn before you are ready to start copying any data.
Also, just because the name includes the word 'free', does not mean that building a FreeNAS system is cheap.

Here are some things you need to read first, before you buy any hardware.

Slideshow explaining VDev, zpool, ZIL and L2ARC
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...ning-vdev-zpool-zil-and-l2arc-for-noobs.7775/

Terminology and Abbreviations Primer
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/terminology-and-abbreviations-primer.28174/

Hardware Recommendations Guide Rev 1e) 2017-05-06
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/hardware-recommendations-guide.12/

Proper Power Supply Sizing Guidance
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/proper-power-supply-sizing-guidance.38811/

Why not to use RAID-5 or RAIDz1
https://www.zdnet.com/article/why-raid-5-stops-working-in-2009/

Building, Burn-In, and Testing your FreeNAS system
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?resources/building-burn-in-and-testing-your-freenas-system.38/

Github repository for FreeNAS scripts, including disk burnin
https://forums.freenas.org/index.ph...for-freenas-scripts-including-disk-burnin.28/

That should get you a good start, but it is a long learning curve because running a Unix server is very different from just adding some drives to a Windows computer. It is not something you should expect to just do over a weekend. Once you build a proper FreeNAS server, if you do it right, it can last five years or more, so you want to do it right. You want to have enough drive capacity for the near term with a plan for how to expand when you need more capacity within the planed life of the server. If you don't build it right to start, which some people don't, you will likely be building another server within a couple years.

 

[Chris Moore]

PS. The Silverstone CS380 is not a terrible case, but it doesn't give you much room for drives.