Preserving data on drives when configuring FreeNas

[Velcrone]

Hi!

I'm planning on turning an old Dell Inspiron into a NAS for backups and a Plex server. Right now I have two (relatively new) 8tb hard drives in a Raid 5(configured using mdadm on Linux if that matters) connected to my computer that I am using for backups. These drives have years of backups which I have to keep. I would like to use these two drives in the NAS in the ZFS equivalent to a Raid 5.

Is there a way to use these in the NAS without having to format them or otherwise lose the data?

 

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

[Windows7ge]

RAID5 requires a minimum of 3 drives. Do you mean RAID1?

 

And without doing something crazy? No. You're probably using EXT4 while ZFS is ZFS. To create the pool all data will be dumped. You have to move it somewhere else then move it back.

[Velcrone]

yeah it's raid1 my bad. If i bought another 8tb drive then put everything on there would there be a way to set up Freenas with two of the drives put all the data on then add the final the new drive to make a RAID5?

[Velcrone]

Alternatively could I install only of the drives then transfer the data from the first drive to it then install the second drive and turn it into a raid1 (or whatever it is with ZFS)

[Windows7ge]

ZFS uses vdevs. Vdevs are RAID0'd together. It's not recommended to make a mirror then append one extra disk as that creates a raid0.

 

What you can do is if you have 4 disks you can do RAID10. Mount the two new disks as a mirror. Copy the data over. Then append the 2 new disks as a mirror. This would make a RAID10.

[Velcrone]

OK thanks for your help! This seems like a very stupid question but is it even possible to set up Freenas with 2 storage drives?

[Jarsky]

4 hours ago, Velcrone said:

OK thanks for your help! This seems like a very stupid question but is it even possible to set up Freenas with 2 storage drives?

 

Of course it is. You could run the disks independantly, or in a mirror raid. You don't have to use RAIDZ. 

A common setup is to create a pool with mirrored VDEV's (which is what Windows7ge is talking about).

That is for example you could have 2 x 8TB disks for 8TB of redundant storage, you can then add another 2 x 8TB disks, for 16TB of redundant storage...each set of disks has its own redundancy, but they can be shown and addressed as a single pool, and use a dataset that stretches across them. 

 

[Velcrone]

9 hours ago, Jarsky said:

 

Of course it is. You could run the disks independantly, or in a mirror raid. You don't have to use RAIDZ. 

A common setup is to create a pool with mirrored VDEV's (which is what Windows7ge is talking about).

That is for example you could have 2 x 8TB disks for 8TB of redundant storage, you can then add another 2 x 8TB disks, for 16TB of redundant storage...each set of disks has its own redundancy, but they can be shown and addressed as a single pool, and use a dataset that stretches across them. 

 

Ok thank you so much for your help!