Selfhosted

46677 readers

1188 users here now

A place to share alternatives to popular online services that can be self-hosted without giving up privacy or locking you into a service you don't control.

Rules:

Be civil: we're here to support and learn from one another. Insults won't be tolerated. Flame wars are frowned upon.
No spam posting.
Posts have to be centered around self-hosting. There are other communities for discussing hardware or home computing. If it's not obvious why your post topic revolves around selfhosting, please include details to make it clear.
Don't duplicate the full text of your blog or github here. Just post the link for folks to click.
Submission headline should match the article title (don’t cherry-pick information from the title to fit your agenda).
No trolling.

Resources:

selfh.st Newsletter and index of selfhosted software and apps
awesome-selfhosted software
awesome-sysadmin resources
Self-Hosted Podcast from Jupiter Broadcasting

Any issues on the community? Report it using the report flag.

Questions? DM the mods!

founded 2 years ago

MODERATORS

[email protected]

Beginner questions about ZFS and how to use my drives. (lemmy.world)

submitted 1 year ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

11 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Hello, I currently have a home server mainly for media, in which I have an SSD for the system and 2 6TB hard drives set up in raid 1 using mdadm, its the most I can fit in the case. I have been getting interested in ZFS and wanting to expand my storage since it's getting pretty full. I have 2 12TB external hard drives. My question is can I create a pool (I think that's what they are called), using all 4 of these drives in a raidz configuration, or is this a bad idea?

(6TB+6TB) + 12TB + 12TB, should give me 24TB, and should work even if one of the 6TB or 12TB fails if I understand this correctly.

How would one go about doing this? Would you mdadm the 2 6TB ones into a raid 0 and then create a pool over that?

I am also just dipping my toes now into Nixos so having a resource that would cover that might be useful since the home server is currently running Debian. This server will be left at my parents house and would like it to have minimal onsite support needed. Parents just need to be able to turn screen on and use the browser.

Thank you

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments

[–] [email protected] 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

Is there any particular reason you're interested in using ZFS?

How do you intend to move over the data on the 2x6 array if you create a new pool with all the drives?

mdadm RAID1 is easy to handle, fairly safe from write holes and easy to upgrade.

If it were me I'd upgrade to a 2x12 array (mdadm RAID1 or ZFS mirror, whichever you want), stored internally. And use the old 6 TB drives as cold storage external backups with Borg Backup. Not necessarily for the media files but you must have some important data that your don't want to lose (passwords, 2FA codes, emails, phone photos etc.)

I wouldn't trust USB-connected arrays much. Most USB enclosures and adapters aren't designed for 24/7 connectivity, and arrays (especially ZFS) are sensitive to the slightest error. Mixing USB drives with any ZFS pool is a recipe for headache IMO.

I could accept using the 2x6 as a RAID1 or mirror by themselves but that's it. Don't mix them with the internal drives.

Not that there's much you could do with that drive setup, since the sizes are mismatched. You could try unraid or snapraid+mergerfs which can do parity with mismatched drives but it's meh.

Oh and never use RAID0 as the bottom layer of anything, when a drive breaks you lose everything.