Should I recreate?

[lpittman]

Hey everyone.

I installed FreeNAS and setup my volumes/shares/etc, but am starting to wonder if I could have configured it more efficiently?

I have 9x WD Green 2TB and 1x WD Green 3TB hard disks, however 4 of them are currently in use in my existing ReadyNAS and 4 WERE in use in my other ReadyNAS, then I had the two spares. So, what I did was backup one of the ReadyNAS and install 3 of those drives in a ZFS raidz config as recommended for performance, then proceeded to copy over some of my data. I then installed 3 more and extended the volume as another raidz pool and continued copying data over.

Now, I sit here with 2x 3 drive raidz pools and am continuing to move data over so I can pull in 3 more drives to extend the volume one more time.

This got me to thinking I could have setup 6 drives to start and could have set them up differently. I'm not sure if different is necessarily better though.

Can I get some thoughts and/or recommendations? I am still at a point where I can move my data back and reconfigure, so no big deal.

Thanks everyone

Luke

 

[cyberjock]

Personally, I'd do a RAIDZ2 anytime before a RAIDZ1. With a RAIDZ1, if you replace one disk and another disk has even a small problem, it can turn into corruption. RAIDZ2 helps prevent that. One of the senior guys I chat with regularly had to resilver a disk for RAIDZ1 and he was "on edge" the whole time it was running. It's just a matter of how much you trust a single disk and no more from having issues.

So, considering you've had this epiphany and you've said its "no big deal" I'd fix it. :)

 

[lpittman]

Thanks for the reply. With 6 disks would you recommend Z2 or Z3? Or should I do 5 disks now, then move my other 4 over to make another 5 disk pool?

EDIT: Okay I re-checked the FAQs and realize that 3,5,9 disks are best with Z and 4,6,10 disks are best with Z2 and 5,7,11 are best with Z3. So, I agree I want Z2, so I've gone with 6 disks. But this creates one more question: when I am ready to move over my other drives, do I need to create Z2 if I want to extend this volume? Or can it be extended with Z1?

 

[cyberjock]

You can do either. But it is recommended you stick with the same type. So in your case, a RAIDZ2.

 

[lpittman]

Can I ask why it is recommended? I like the idea of sticking with Z2, but that would mean I have to buy 2 more disks.