I have 2 x 10 TB SATA drives. TrueNAS is installed on another NVMe disk.
Is it okay to have the first 5 TB of each disk in a mirror and the second 5 TB of each disk in a stripe? The mirror will be for important data. The stripe will be for backups. I am looking for the sweet spot of having enough space for backups and having protection of important data.
I would like in a few months to add a 3rd and a 4th drive but right now this is something I cannot plan well because I don’t know the size of the data I will be collecting.
Not a good idea to partition drives and then create separate vdevs/pools out of them. You have 2 disks so your current options are a mirror or a stripe. The decision comes down to how much you care about the data you are putting on the NAS. May I strongly suggest using a mirror.
Welcome to the forums.
Regarding future upgrade options you can simply add an additional two disks either 10TB or larger to create a second vdev to your pool and expand that way or alternatively replace each 10TB drive one at a time with your larger drives.
Thank you @Johnny_Fartpants for your welcome and for your time replying. I have personal challenges getting my head around all the things I’ve read and watched. You are the first human to give me info. Thank you!
If you can, can you please tell me why my initial idea is not good?
ZFS expects to use whole disks. By partitioning a drive and using it in two different pools you increase your failure domain (if one disk fails two logic partitions fail). Performance also takes a massive hit as I/O is doubled by default.
The primary reason to use ZFS is to protect your data and all the above goes against that fundamental idea.
