On Mon, Jul 18, 2011 at 3:28 PM, Tiernan OToole <lsmart...@gmail.com> wrote: > Ok, so, taking 2 300Gb disks, and 2 500Gb disks, and creating an 800Gb > mirrored striped thing is sounding like a bad idea... what about just > creating a pool of all disks, without using mirrors? I seen something called > "copies", which if i am reading correctly, will make sure a number of copies > of a file exist... Am i reading that correctly? If this does work the way i > think it works, then taking all 4 disks, and making one large 1.6Tb pool, > setting copies to 2, should, in theory, create a poor mans pool with > striping, right?
Step back a moment. What are your priorites? What is the most important thing for you? Is it space? Is it data protection? Is it something else? Once you determine that, it's easier to come up with a reasonable setup. Back to your original question, I'd like to note some things. First of all, using USB disks for permanent storage is a bad idea. Go for e-sata instead (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serial_ata#eSATA). It eliminates the overhead caused by USB-to-[P/S]ATA bridge. You can get something like a e-sata bracket (If your controller supports port multiplier) or e-sata PCI controller, plus e-sata enclosure with 2 or 4 drive bays (depending on your needs). Second, using copies=2 + stripe is, again, a bad idea. While "copies=2" can protect you from something like bad sector, it will NOT protect you from drive failure. So when one drive broke your pool will still be unaccessible. Stick with strpe of mirrors instead. Go with what Edward suggested: rearrange the disk, and create stripe of (mirror of 500G internal + 500G external) + (mirror of 300G internal + 300G external). Another option, if you go with external enclosure route, is to just put all disks in the external enclosure, and go with the configuration Jim suggested (2 x 200GB mirror, plus 4 x 300GB mirror/raidz1) -- Fajar _______________________________________________ zfs-discuss mailing list zfs-discuss@opensolaris.org http://mail.opensolaris.org/mailman/listinfo/zfs-discuss
