Hi from IT Auditor

[Srikanth K Kota]

Hi All,

I am an IT Auditor and a year back I bought a Seagate NAS box for my data. It didnt properly work for 20 days in one year. The hard disk has also got some problems. Finally I decided to make my own NAS using Ubuntu. When searching the net I got to know about FreeNAS. I already bought a system to make and the configuration is as below.

System: Workstation
Model: Dell Precision T7500 Workstation
Processor: Xeon with 4MB cache
Memory: 16 Gig
Disk: WD Red 3TB, SATA III, 5400 RPM, 64 MB Cache, with NASware 3.0 (Effectively got only 2 TB)

I downloaded FreeNAS and installed on a 140 Gig HDD (yes, I know that it recommended to install on USB disk as the system will not use more than 8 GB - I tried this and after a day or two the USB disk is getting heated up and getting spoiled) So decided to go with HDD.

Cheers, Sri

 

[m0nkey_]

Welcome to the forums!

 

[gpsguy]

Welcome to the forums!

This information is a bit out of date. USB was recommended in the pre-9.3 days, since the boot image was limited to about 3GB. FreeNAS 9.3 and later use ZFS for the boot device and can utilize all the space on the device. 16-32GB is probably plenty, with 8GB being a minimum. As you've found out, USB devices can fail, so many users have switched to SSD's and/or SATA DOM's.

yes, I know that it recommended to install on USB disk as the system will not use more than 8 GB

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

As you've found out, USB devices can fail, so many users have switched to SSD's and/or SATA DOM's.

Thanks a lot gpsguy. I haven't thought about the SSD. Now I will check for the prices of two SSD each 40 GB. Probably I will move to SSD very soon. Also I was going through the FreeNAS forums and came across the below article on ECC and non-ECC memory. https://forums.freenas.org/index.php?threads/ecc-vs-non-ecc-ram-and-zfs.15449/. I just checked my system and realized that they are non-ECC memory chips. So I am planning to move to ECC memory before moving to SSD.

 

[m0nkey_]

ECC isn't a hard requirement, however it is a strong recommendation if you care about data integrity and stability.

 

[danb35]

WD Red 3TB, SATA III, 5400 RPM, 64 MB Cache, with NASware 3.0 (Effectively got only 2 TB)

How does a 3 TB disk "effectively" only have 2 TB?

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

How does a 3 TB disk "effectively" only have 2 TB?

I placed 3TB disk and in the disks section it showed that the disk size is only 2.2TB. In volume manager it showed that I have 1.8 TB. I have attached the screenshots for your reference. Please let me know if I am doing some mistake and/or if I can get more storage out of this 3 TB disk.

 

[danb35]

I placed 3TB disk and in the disks section it showed that the disk size is only 2.2TB.

That's very strange indeed. I'm aware of a 2.2 TB limit for MBR-formatted disks, but FreeNAS doesn't use MBR. And everything else I can find about a 2.2 TB limit sounds like it's an OS limitation (which is not present in FreeNAS), not a hardware limitation.

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

That's very strange indeed. I'm aware of a 2.2 TB limit for MBR-formatted disks, but FreeNAS doesn't use MBR. And everything else I can find about a 2.2 TB limit sounds like it's an OS limitation (which is not present in FreeNAS), not a hardware limitation.

So, do you recommend that I delete the partition using some Windows OS and connect again? Will it give me more space? After your message, I shutdown the NAS and checked the size at the time of boot and it showed something around 2460 GB (not exact number but around that). So I am not totally confused now.

 

[danb35]

Well, let's try a little more investigation. I'm suspecting that your machine may be using an old SAS controller that is somehow limiting the capacity that shows to the OS. What's the output of gpart show da1 and camcontrol devlist?

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

The output of gpart command is

gpart show da0
=> 40 4294967216 da0 GPT (2.0T)
40 88 - free - (44k)
128 4194304 1 freebsd-swap (2.0G)
4194432 4290772816 2 freebsd-zfs (2.0T)
4294967248 8 - free - (4.0K)


camcontrol devlist
<ATA WDS WD30EFRX-68E 0A82> at scbus0 target 0 lun 0 (pass0,da0)
<WDC WD1600JS-60MHB1 10.002E02> at scbus3 target 0 lun 0 (pass1,ada0)


 

[Srikanth K Kota]

Reposting the gpart output as it is not clear above...

gpart show da0
=> 40 4294967216 da0 GPT (2.0T)
40 88 - free - (44k)
128 4194304 1 freebsd-swap (2.0G)
4194432 4290772816 2 freebsd-zfs (2.0T)
4294967248 8 - free - (4.0K)

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

Well danb35, looks like you are right. The SAS 6/iR will not support drives larger than 2TB. So not sure what to do now.
I was planning to use 6 - 3TB drives with RaidZ2. Any suggestions around this?

 

[danb35]

The SAS 6/iR will not support drives larger than 2TB. So not sure what to do now.

Don't use the RAID card; connect the drives directly to your motherboard. If you need more SATA/SAS ports than are on your motherboard, use a well-supported SAS HBA like the LSI/Broadcom/Avago 9210/9211 series.

 

[Srikanth K Kota]

Don't use the RAID card; connect the drives directly to your motherboard. If you need more SATA/SAS ports than are on your motherboard, use a well-supported SAS HBA like the LSI/Broadcom/Avago 9210/9211 series.

I learned a lot from you today. Thanks a lot for sharing the knowledge.