Hi all - new to NAS world so please bear with me, need a bit of a sense check to make sure I understand how the below could work. I have 6x 12tb HDDs in a gaming rig (only 3 currently have data I need to keep - 3 can be wiped). Aim to shift to a 8 bay NAS but do not plan on filling out the extra 2 …

Another point is that, while we generally love ZFS and TrueNAS here, it isn’t for everyone, and many people find it has kind of a steep learning curve. If data integrity isn’t super-important to you, you may want to look into other NAS software. OpenMediaVault seems to get pretty good reviews, and…

Take it the other way around. First: What are your storage needs? Are there different tiers of data (possibly different pools), or is it just a big bulk of data (one pool, but quite possibly different datasets for different purposes)? Then what are your requirements for security/resiliency and fle…

I’ll just leave that here [image] iX's ZFS Pool Layout White Paper Resources

[image] meditate: Would I have to create a 4 drive vdev then leave out my 2 spare drives until I can buy another 2 to make another 4 drive vdev to add to the pool? (a shame as it means I can’t use 2 of my drives for now) Viable. [image] meditate: Could I create a 6 drive vdev then add th…

Just to make sure, these disks are not SMR… are they?

Alternative solution is Unraid, which is proprietary and requires purchasing. Not a fan, but a lot of people like it because it allows for easy expansion. You choose how many parity disks you want, then you can continue to add drives as long as they are smaller than the parity disk(s). People who r…

Thanks all. Will read the whitepaper in more detail too. So basically I’m limited to a max 3 drive vdev if I don’t want to lose the data on the existing drives? I guess I can lose that data, won’t be too much of an issue really, if a 6 drive Raidz1/2 + a 2 drive mirror is the better way to go. Over…

[image] meditate: No idea if SMR or not and can’t seem to find an easy way of finding out with a Google search - they are WD Reds as far as I can remember. WD Reds are a red (pun intended) flag regarding SMR, make sure to check since SMR ( especially WD’s ) is not compatible with ZFS. List of W…

[image] meditate: Is there another better way of doing this? I’m thinking the best overall would be to have your six disks in three sets of two-way mirrors, striped together, leaving two bays open to add another pair in the future. This would also simplify getting the data that’s currently o…

Thanks for the link - lucky me, they are all CMR it seems. Was aiming to set up the NAS to avoid letting the gaming rig run 24/7 (200w power draw ends up being a lot) rather than planning for guaranteed safety of all data

[image] Davvo: these disks are not SMR… are they? I thought SMR was only a factor for <= 8 TB disks, so they shouldn’t be.

Noob advice needed - expansion of drives and choices

TrueNAS General

chuck32 April 13, 2024, 9:26am 3

I’ll just leave that here

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Noob advice needed - expansion of drives and choices

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