MB Replacement, HDD Addition

[Nightscar]

Hello Everyone,
I am relatively new to FreeNas so I apologize for my lack of knowledge.

I have had a FreeNAS running for probably close to a year now and everything was going great until my MB took a crap. Which brings me to my 1st question.
I currently have a new MB on its way, when it comes to FreeNAS is it just a matter of swapping in the new MB? Will FreeNAS pickup where it left off? Or will I have to redo my entire FreeNAS?

My 2nd question pertains to adding another HDD..
Currently I have 3 1TB HDD in my FreeNAS.. I realize its a small NAS but it suits my purpose. I was thinking about adding a 4th 1TB HDD to the mix but I am not sure if it is possible to just add in another HDD? Or will I have to wipe and redo my entire FreeNAS?
(which btw is no issue I have all data backed up on a external HDD)

Thank you for any help you can give me
Nightscar

 

[danb35]

Motherboard swap is no problem. To safely add a drive to the pool, though, you'll need to destroy and rebuild the pool.

 

[Nick2253]

To you first question, I think it should work without problem.

This might be a good time to point out that your data (your pool) is completely separate from your OS (FreeNAS). If your OS drive dies, or you break it, etc, then your pool will be just fine. Likewise, you could remove your pool, and FreeNAS would still boot and function just fine.

To you second question, it depends on how you have your pool set up. My guess is that you currently have one three-drive RAIDZ1 vdev in your pool. If that's the case, and you want your pool to be one four-drive RAIDZ1 vdev, then yes, you'll have to wipe and redo your pool. (But again, you wouldn't have to redo everything. You'd have to reconfigure a few shares and permissions, but not everything.)

An alternative, though highly discouraged, would be to to add your forth drive as a second vdev. This would mean your pool is configured as one RAIDZ1 vdev, and one single-disk vdev. The problem is that, if your single disk dies, your entire pool is lost. Redundancy is done on the vdev level, not the pool level, and if one vdev is lost, the entire pool associated with that vdev is lost. Which is one of the big problems with FreeNAS: you cannot change vdevs after you create them*. (*I believe you can add additional mirrors to mirrored vdevs after the fact, though have a triple (or more) mirror is usually undesirable and pretty uncommon).

Again, to reiterate the point, if you want your new HDD to be part of a redundant array of disks, then you'll either need to get more disks and create a new RAIDZx (or mirrored) vdev, or you'll need to delete and recreate the existing vdev (and therefore, the existing pool).

 

[Nightscar]

Thank you for the replys.
Ya off hand I do not remember which raid I used .. however I do remember that when I set it up I believe I used a raid so that when one drives fails I can just pop in another one and it would be rebuilt .. of course if that ever happens I will probably be back to ask how that all works haha.

I did a little research in the FreeNAS documentation and it seamed to me that to add another HDD, you would just go into disk manager and add it.. although like Nick2253 stated it all depends on what Raid I used, which I will have to look at when I get my new MB.

Overall if I need to remake the pool, its np I will just go and redo a backup before I add the new HDD.
Just wish there was an easier way to add a another HDD, but with raid I know it can be tricky if not impossible.

 

[Nightscar]

After giving it some thought, I think what I am going to do is redo my pool, now my final question is this.
Should I do a mirror? or stay with Raidz1?

Some research suggest a mirror but to be honest, its not like its a business NAS, and I do regular backups every 3 months or so (to a external) with very little file structure change on my NAS .. So I think I will just stick with Raidz1.. but I wanted some opinions.

I will probably be back with the question on how do I erase/destroy my old pool and recreate it again lol. If I cant figure it out.

Thank you again all
Nightscar

 

[Nick2253]

You'd probably be fine with RAIDZ1. My guess is that you'd be better off with RAIDZ2 than doing mirrors, unless you anticipate a sudden need for high I/O on your server.

 

[gpsguy]

You should be able to use your current boot device(s) and hard disks without any issues. If your NIC changes, for example from a re0 to an em0, you'd need to reconfigure the network interface. Other than that, you should be good to go.

I currently have a new MB on its way, when it comes to FreeNAS is it just a matter of swapping in the new MB?

 

[Nightscar]

You'd probably be fine with RAIDZ1. My guess is that you'd be better off with RAIDZ2 than doing mirrors, unless you anticipate a sudden need for high I/O on your server.

Ya my NAS is mostly for Plex and file backups .. that's about it nothing to heavy on the disks or cpu.

 

[Nightscar]

Thank you again everyone for your help and info :)

 

[Nightscar]

Update 8-23-2016

Ok so, I got my new MB and HDD popped everything in, and come to find out the PSU was on its way out.. the old MB was fine /facepalm
I have a PSU tester and it was weird flipping the PSU switch sometimes the tester would read fine other times it wouldn't come on at all .. so i'm scratching it up to being the switch on the PSU was bad or something.

Anyway, after I got everything situated with another PSU I had laying around, I started up my FreeNAS server v10. and used the Volume manager to create another volume, I did not see where I could select raidz1, only mirror or stripe. so being a beginner I followed through with stripe and could see my NAS on my network but that was all, couldn't write to it at all.

So I went back, erased and destroyed everything, and used the wizard this time to setup my NAS once again. From the wizard I saw and selected raidz1 (media) and setup a windows share and all that.
Again afterwards I could see my NAS and an option to create a folder(testing) but it kept telling me I did not have permission to write to my NAS.

So after fiddling around and trying to make sure all my permissions where set under the CIFS shares for windows.. I destroyed and recreated again .. only this time I used the generic options instead of windows shares.
Still didn't help and or work when writing to my NAS, along the way I tried making a data set, ect ect. (pulling hair out)

Finally I came across Services (CIFS) and clicked the wrench. From there I found a dropdown box for guest account.. it was set to "nobody". So on a whim I set it to root .. now everything works fine :)
Good god lol

I hope I have everything setup the correct way.. the last time I used the wizard like I said I used the generic I think it was unix option for shares .. but it still made a windows share and nothing is under unix shares ???... so I don't get that part.

The one thing I don't get (lol one thing yaaa) is under Windows (CIFS) shares I see my "NasStorage" I had allow guest account and apply default permissions checked, and that did nothing.. I had to go into services and use that drop down box for guest to make it all work. In other words whats the point of having those options under windows shares if they don't work unless you go into services and mess around ... lol They should have it to where if you use the wizard to setup a NAS and create a windows share, if you select allow guest then under services CIFS that "nobody" should auto switch to "root" would make things a little easier for first time users of FreeNAS. This is just how I see it at face value I am sure I am missing some deeper meaning for all these settings.

Now I'm sure all this is written in the guide, but damned if I was going to try and find the resolve for my particular issue, cause at the time I was like .. ya i'm going to have to ask on the forums. At the time I had absolutely no clue what to do. So how do you search for an answer to an issue when your not sure what is wrong.

Overall it was a good learning experience for me, and for future endeavors I might have when I upgrade to more space.. Hope by then, FreeNAS will have the ability to just add in hdd(s) without a total volume wipe.

Again I LOVE Freenas and everything they have done to make having a NAS as easy as possible to setup, although with a small learning curve.
Now once all my files are transferred back using "SyncToy" its on to starting up my plex server and MinerOS. Although a question for another time is how do you go about backing up your minecraft world with minerOS..
But that's for another time.

Again TY for the help and info guys.
Nightscar

 

[Spearfoot]

...my FreeNAS server v10.
Nightscar

You do realize that FreeNAS v10 is alpha software? And that you should be using v9.10 for production use?

 

[Nightscar]

You do realize that FreeNAS v10 is alpha software? And that you should be using v9.10 for production use?

I misspoke , I double checked and I am using v9.10 stable version .. my bad :)