Help Comparing RAID Mirror to 7 Drive RAID Z3

[hunter]

I currently use two 6 Tb drives in a mirror and backup to individual 3 Tb drives (one uses snapshots and another drive uses rsync).

My data is finally surpassing the 3 Tb limit of my backup drives so I am considering building a 7 Drive RAID Z3 with my backup drives and 5 other 3 Tb drives I have. Then I would re-use the 6 Tb drives for future backups.

The storage is mostly used to store digital media and a small amount of excel worksheets, personal photos, etc.

I understand the 7 drive array would have less IOPS (maybe limited by the slowest drive in the array) and will use more power, on paper it looks like it will be more reliable in a mttdl sense.

Are the FreeNAS veterans out there aware of additional trade-offs I should consider?

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[MrToddsFriends]

My data is finally surpassing the 3 Tb limit of my backup drives so I am considering building a 7 Drive RAID Z3 with my backup drives and 5 other 3 Tb drives I have.

Are you planning to test all these 3TB drives thoroughly in the sense of a disk burnin before building up an RaidZ3 array from them? How are you planning to use this backup array, with regular maintenance tasks set up (scrubs, SMART tests) or without?

 

[hunter]

Are you planning to test all these 3TB drives thoroughly in the sense of a disk burnin before building up an RaidZ3 array from them? How are you planning to use this backup array, with regular maintenance tasks set up (scrubs, SMART tests) or without?

Yes, I was thinking if I go that route, to install all 7 drives in advance. Thank you for the link to testing and burn in as learning what is required for that and how to do it was one of my items to do before making a decision.

My mirror has weekly scrubs scheduled and periodic smart tests running, (I forgot the recommendation I followed from here to schedule the smart tests). Would I be correct in assuming it would make sense to use the same scrub and smart test(s) scheduling scheme for drives in my larger array?

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[MrToddsFriends]

Yes, I was thinking if I go that route, to install all 7 drives in advance. Thank you for the link to testing and burn in as learning what is required for that and how to do it was one of my items to do before making a decision.

I just wanted to know if you are heading to RaidZ3 because you are contemplating to run it without much maintenance. With regular maintenance RaidZ3 is a very safe configuration, of course.

My mirror has weekly scrubs scheduled and periodic smart tests running, (I forgot the recommendation I followed from here to schedule the smart tests). Would I be correct in assuming it would make sense to use the same scrub and smart test(s) scheduling scheme for drives in my larger array?

I would use the same schedules in larger RaidZ2 and RaidZ3 vdevs as I do with my mirror vdevs. The recommendation I'm using in a slightly modified form is this one:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/scrub-and-smart-testing-schedules.20108/

 

[hunter]

I just wanted to know if you are heading to RaidZ3 because you are contemplating to run it without much maintenance. With regular maintenance RaidZ3 is a very safe configuration, of course.



I would use the same schedules in larger RaidZ2 and RaidZ3 vdevs as I do with my mirror vdevs. The recommendation I'm using in a slightly modified form is this one:
https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/scrub-and-smart-testing-schedules.20108/

Thank you for sharing your thoughts. I was heading to RaidZ3 because at least 2 of the drives I have available are barely used 4 year old Seagate 3 Tb drives. I remember reading something on the internet that said their failure rates are pretty high. After reading that I started buying WD Red drives and HGST drives.

After the array is set up, low maintenance is a big plus to me.

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