I'm planning to build a new server and am currently deciding what drives to purchase and how to organize them. I would like to use multiple drive sizes to offset the tendency of drives to fail from the same manufacturing batches. As I am new to RAID, I'm not quite sure about all the ways to go about doing this. My latest idea was to have multiple arrays mirrored, with each array composed of different sized drives in a single pool, but that creates a problem for expansion if I cannot find the same sized drives in the future. What I am looking for is some sort of RAID setup in which differently sized drives can be added and removed. Something like JBOD, but with redundancy. Does anyone have any suggestions for this? Thank you.
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RAID setups and multiple drive sizes
- Thread starter RHall
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ZFS Noob
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Create a set of mirrored VDevs, like this:
- vdev consisting of two 1TB drives
- vdev consisting of two 2TB drives
- vdev consisting of two 3TB drives
- Stripe the three vdevs together, so you've got 6TB total space across three mirrors.
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My advice if you want to negate the premature failure due to batches is to purchase a few drives from different manufacturers or just different models but using the same capacity. I'm running six WD Red drives, not a single failure. I don't think you have much to worry about from batch run problems. I'd say the issue would be poor shipping getting the drive to your home.
There is no JBOD in this system either.
There is no JBOD in this system either.
You did such a terrific job on setting up your WD Red HDD.
I purchased four of these WD Red HDD from Newegg and i couldn't get to work at all.
When I tried to create ZFS volume manager it gives some error saying "Unable to GT format the drives"
Also, When Importing Volume I got these errors. See below picture.
FreeNas 9.1 Release
Wd Red 3TB
Buil-in Raid controller (on Mobo)
P7P55D-E LX Mobo
I purchased four of these WD Red HDD from Newegg and i couldn't get to work at all.
When I tried to create ZFS volume manager it gives some error saying "Unable to GT format the drives"
Also, When Importing Volume I got these errors. See below picture.
FreeNas 9.1 Release
Wd Red 3TB
Buil-in Raid controller (on Mobo)
P7P55D-E LX Mobo
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So if I am going to turn off RAID controller on the MB, will I still be able to configure the HDD as RAID within freeNAS storage configuration page? Thanks.
pirateghost
Unintelligible Geek
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pirateghost
Unintelligible Geek
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So you turned off the RAID in the BIOS. Now you probably need to delete all the partition information on your drives because I wouldn't be surprised if your BIOS RAID put on some funny format. You might be able to do this through FreeNAS but I prefer something a bit more specific to do it like GParted version 0.7.1-5 (that's the version I have). You boot the CD and then you can make all the changes you want to your hard drives. I'd just remove the partitions and see if that works. If just removing the partitions fail to work, go ahead and create a simple volume for each drive and then try to use the drives. FreeNAS should allow you to reformat/partition the drives at that point.
Also, ensure AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. I doubt this would cause the problem you are seeing but AHCI should be enabled for FreeNAS use.
Also, ensure AHCI is enabled in the BIOS. I doubt this would cause the problem you are seeing but AHCI should be enabled for FreeNAS use.
HBA cards aren't cheap. I would rather spend that money on a Supermicro mobo and dont need to worry anything.
So, let say if i get one of this supermicro mobo (New 4th Gen Intel core processor), I am hoping this time that using the built-in HBA/RAID controller on this board will solve my problem. I ordered this motherboard today and let see how it goes.
Richman
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Did 'ric' highjack 'RHall's' thread?
You don't need any HW RAID controller of any kind on any MB. FreeNAS is software RAID. Maybe you should do some basic reading. I think this is the first thing I learned when checking into FreeNAS many, many, many, many, many, many, many many, months ago.
You don't need any HW RAID controller of any kind on any MB. FreeNAS is software RAID. Maybe you should do some basic reading. I think this is the first thing I learned when checking into FreeNAS many, many, many, many, many, many, many many, months ago.
sacredgaming
Cadet
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^^ tons of reading and reading. My head hurts ;) fun stuff but, finding correct information regarding a specific situation can be a bit tricky. That's why I joined here. For anyone else reading this HBA's can be had for relatively cheap the IBM M1015's are working great in my system and I picked them up for about 80 each.
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