Same here - I set it up as 5x RAIDZ1 and its probably fine, but I do sometimes wish that I had set it up as a Z2 instead.
You would lose an additional drive, though, no? I guess space is not an issue itās better. I donāt think I could lose a drive of space.
That is why the TRAID or SHR interested me. I could replace one 4tb drive with an 8 or something and it should just adjust on the fly. Do that once every couple of month to spread out the cost.
Yes. Of course.
There are big trade-offs for having this sort of flexibility. The TrueNAS / ZFS philosophy is to allow you (and recommend you) to keep your data very safe against loss through redundancy - and if you care that much about your data you will be investing in new drives when you build your NAS, and so why not expect them to be the same size.
There is nothing wrong with wanting to be able to use a hotch-potch of old drives as a way to store data (thus saving the planet by avoiding the carbon + resource cost of making a new drive), but this is not what TrueNAS and ZFS are aiming at.
Also if TRAID or SHR can genuinely reconfigure the RAID themselves so as to use the extra space on one new disk, then that is VERY impressive. Working out the best configuration for a mix of empty drives of different disk sizes would be impressive enough - working out how to migrate from one such mix to a different mix and doing so safely (i.e. retaining redundancy) and in a reasonable time-scale is an order of magnitude more complex and would be incredible. (ZFS has enough difficulty doing RAIDZ expansion in a reasonable time-scale and that is simple by comparison to this.)
I am not building it, itās already bought and built. However, I am approaching storage max, have about 2tb left.
My thoughts here are, when I get closer to max, I can buy an 8TB, and replace one of the 4s. Which will add. Then I can buy 8s once every month or two to get 5 8s and I donāt have to redo the raid but donāt have to buy 5 8tb drives all at once. Just simple expandability really.
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What are you planning to do with your TOS RAID data if you rebuild with TrueNAS. I assume that you have other storage where it can go. In which case, you will have 16TB free once you have built TrueNAS.
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If 5x4TB is not enough, my advice would be to buy a new NAS and (now that we have RAIDZ expansion) populate c. 60% of your drive slots in the new system with disks that are large enough to support your current needs + reasonable growth for the next few years, and once you have grown to the point that you need more space then use RAIDZ expansion to add another disk.
Or for your existing NAS, replace 3x 4TB with e.g. 18TB drives now - and build a RAIDZ2 on these. Then when you run out of space, add a new 18TB drive. (So you will start with 18TB of useable space and end up with 54TB - which is pretty big growth potential.)
You can use the 4TB drives elsewhere or sell them to partially fund the 18TB drives.
I have a 12TB external that I saw at Sams for $90. Could not pass it up. I back up that data to that every night.
That was a darned good buy!!!