I have a failing drive 1tb that is part of a 2 disk fault tolerant raid. I want to replace it with 12TB Seagate IronWolf CMR but I really cant get 2 of them right now to have raid.
Would I be ok to just get one now not use raid then in the future buy a 2nd one to add for raid for redundancy? That or just get 2 12 TB SMR now for nearly the same price as one CMR. I know thats frowned upon mostly. I have been using free/truenas for several years with SMR and this is the first time I had a drive die, but 1TB is the largest drive I have used at this point.
I am only using my trunas as just a backup for my personal files. mostly pics, videos and blender and unreal animation etc.
Thoughts? Thanks
No, no, no. Do not under any circumstances use SMR disks.
You can replace one of your 1 TB disks with a 12 TB disk, and then replace the other one when budget allows. Until you replace the second one, your available capacity won’t increase.
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OK but then I may as well not get 12TB now if cant use it all. I can just use one 12 TB disk non raid then in the future add a second one and change it to raid correct?
That’s also possible.
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I’ve found that caching CMR drives like the IronWolf are more problematic with both TrueNAS and UnRAID than they should be. If you shop the sales, you can often find 14 or 18 TiB WaterPanther Eco drives for less than the IronWolf, and I’ve personally found them more reliable and cheap enough that the MTBF on RAIDZ2 is worth the trade-off of not running NAS-quality drives if you have a decent enclosure. YMMV of course, based on your budget, equipment, and use case.
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