Multiple Volumes on one hdd possible?!

[Genoo]

Hi there,

Im replacing my old software nas solution with freenas but failed in setting it up over the webinterface.

Im having a 1TB hdd and a 3TB hdd. I would like to have them both as raid 1. The remaining 2TB on the one drive should just be unmirrored usable.
So Im creating a mirrored volume, its creating one with 1TB, all fine so far. But what now with the remaining 2TB? If I try to create another volume, there is no hdd selectable.

Any advices how to get that working?

 

[gpsguy]

It won't work - not designed to work that way.

Read Cyberjock's guide and learn about vdev's, pools, etc.

Either buy another 3Tb drive and mirror it, or use your existing drives. Unfortunately, with the latter, you'll only have about 900Gb of usable space.

 

[Genoo]

Not designed by who? Freenas? Freebsd? Sorry I never used freebsd so I dont know which tools it has to support such stuff.
But under linux its easy possible to add multiple volumes to one driven and even span raids over drives which arent directly connected. In my last setup I had 2x1tb with 2x raid 1 and 1x raid0 on them. Cant see why my even more simpler task shouldnt work under freebsd and therefore under freenas.

In the guide you posted I couldnt find details about volumes and there restrictions to hdds.

 

[ProtoSD]

Gpsguy is correct, FreeNAS is not designed to split drives and use partitions to create raid, or use the left over space. Actually it's a pretty common practice even with hardware raid. Perhaps FreeNAS isn't the best solution for you, there are other poor man's NAS software solutions that have ways to do what you're asking.

 

[jgreco]

Not designed by who? Freenas? Freebsd? Sorry I never used freebsd so I dont know which tools it has to support such stuff.
But under linux its easy possible to add multiple volumes to one driven and even span raids over drives which arent directly connected. In my last setup I had 2x1tb with 2x raid 1 and 1x raid0 on them. Cant see why my even more simpler task shouldnt work under freebsd and therefore under freenas.

FreeBSD can do incredible things, but at the cost of requiring some knowledge to set it up.

FreeNAS is designed to be a product that can be used by the average user. As such, it is important that the *software* be able to act on behalf of the user to make sane configurations and to protect things properly in the event of a failure.

If you pick up a commercial small NAS product, most of them will offer you data protection choices of "RAID1" or "RAID5", both of which require same-sized drives. You can use two drives of differing sizes, but only without data protection. FreeNAS parallels that.

Your task is not "simple" from an "understanding the consequences and interactions and supporting that programmatically " point of view; it ought to be easy to see why a NAS designer would not try to implement support for your desired setup, because then there would be pressure to support not just two partitions per disk, but three, or four, or even more, and then you're really deep in the weeds. "I've got an 80GB, 400GB, 500GB, 750GB, 1TB, 1.5TB, and 2TB drive and I want to make use of every bit of space with as much protection as I can manage!" It rapidly turns into madness.

However, you can certainly do what you want. Go install FreeBSD, and set it up just the way you describe.

 

[Genoo]

Thanks for the kind feedback.
Its realy sad that this isnt supported. I even read how that stuff works in freebsd in general, applied that over the console and tried to import that. Without success of course :(

 

[jgreco]

It's possible that NAS4Free might support what you want. The old version of FreeNAS, NAS4Free, was aimed a little more at recycling old miscellaneous hardware laying around the basement. FreeNAS 8 is a ground-up rewrite that is intended more for power user and professional deployments, and forms the framework for iXsystem's TrueNAS.

 

[Genoo]

Thanks for the hint but I already got it working under freebsd :) Now I just have to get all the applications installed/compiled :/
Thanks anyway for the kind help.