Is it possible to setup ZFS/Btrfs RAID with just 1 drive, then add more in the future?

[YamiYukiSenpai]

Is it possible to setup ZFS/Btrfs RAID with just 1 drive, and will just add more drives in the future?

 

I currently just purchased 1 20TB IronWolf & planning on buying another 1 later this year for my Jellyfin/Nextcloud server.  I plan on getting another 20TB NAS drive in the future, and i don't want to deal with erasing the drive, and just want to simply add the drive for and enable redundancy. Then add a 3rd for RAID 10.

[Kilrah]

ZFS no. BTRFS yes but if you're adding the 2nd drive for more space rather than redundancy then a failed drive would mean loss of the entire contents.

If you want easy expandability maybe consider Unraid as the OS for your server.

[YamiYukiSenpai]

27 minutes ago, Kilrah said:

BTRFS yes but if you're adding the 2nd drive for more space rather than redundancy then a failed drive would mean loss of the entire contents.

My goal is RAID 10.

 

So I can configure the drive's partition as RAID 10,  then just add more drives?

 

Or do I just set it as Btrfs, and then do the configuration in the future?

[manikyath]

15 minutes ago, YamiYukiSenpai said:

 

So I can configure the drive's partition as RAID 10,  then just add more drives?

no. RAID is "array of disks", you might be able to convert from a single disk to a raid1 when you add one more disk, and that to a raid10 when you add two more disks after that.. but you're not setting up any sort of raid without the minimum amount of drives required for that type of array.

[YamiYukiSenpai]

3 minutes ago, manikyath said:

you might be able to convert from a single disk to a raid1 when you add one more disk

This is pretty much what I want.  I don't want to buy an extra drive because I want to erase the current disk.

[Kilrah]

49 minutes ago, YamiYukiSenpai said:

Or do I just set it as Btrfs, and then do the configuration in the future?

Yeah it should work.

 

Easiest is to check by making a VM, giving it 4 small vdisks and experiment the expected migrations with that.

[Electronics Wizardy]

3 hours ago, Kilrah said:

ZFS no. BTRFS yes but if you're adding the 2nd drive for more space rather than redundancy then a failed drive would mean loss of the entire contents.

If you want easy expandability maybe consider Unraid as the OS for your server.

You can do this with ZFS. Take a single drive, add a mirror later on, then add a second set or mirrors after than.