Adding drives to a JBOD array

[SteppingHat]

Hey internet!

 

In the near future I'm looking at building a hackintosh* computer just for general everyday use for various reasons, one of which being my gaming pc turns my very small room into a sauna during the summer thanks to its dual AMD GPU's (seriously who needs a heater with those things?)

 

I would like to go 100% SSD with the system but since I'd rather not spend 50% of my budget just on storage to get about 512GB-1TB straight off the bat, I was thinking of doing a JBOD setup with 256GB SSDs.

 

This would be fine if I were buying the SSD's straight up but the thing is...I'm not. So the question at hand is after I install the OS onto the first SSD and buy another one say 3 months later, is it possible to add the second SSD to the array without having to rebuild it/reinstall hackintosh?

 

Personally I've never done RAID before (apart from my gaming pc which used 1TB drives in RAID 10 - straightforward one time setup and forget so far) so getting into more complex tasks such as adding to an existing array or just RAID on OSX in general is an entirely new world to me.

 

Thanks in advance for all your help!

 

*Plz dun h8 mi

[FizzyFantom]

JBOD is short for "Just a Bunch Of Disks", this isn't RAID. It is perfectly fine to add and remove drives as you wish from a JBOD as each is treated individually and you should keep track of what is on them (unless of course they are used together as a dynamic disk, then removing one will remove that data and may destroy the array).

What sort of RAID are you thinking of? RAID 0 for speed, RAID 1 for backups or RAID 10 for both (which would require more drives of course)?

In a RAID 0 you would have to format and rebuild the whole array, but I think you can add a drive to an existing RAID 1. As for RAID 10 I'm not sure, but it may be possible to add another mirrored stripe, similar to RAID 1.

[MuffinTopMike]

You should be able to add drives to it because it isn't RAID.

[SteppingHat]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-RAID_drive_architectures

 

I'm after the concatenation type. I don't intend on removing any, just slowly add over time.

 

Really all I'm after is just the system to see it all as one big drive.

 

Also I derped up and was meant to say non-raid not raid. Oops.

[FizzyFantom]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Non-RAID_drive_architectures

 

I'm after the concatenation type. I don't intend on removing any, just slowly add over time.

 

Really all I'm after is just the system to see it all as one big drive.

 

Also I derped up and was meant to say non-raid not raid. Oops.

I don't have any experience in this, but these may be able to help you:

http://www.macissues.com/2014/04/10/how-to-make-a-custom-fusion-drive-in-os-x/

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-make-a-custom-corestorage-drive-in-os-x/

 

I have read that this can cause issues when used as a boot drive, but there is likely a workaround for this. Best of luck

[SteppingHat]

I don't have any experience in this, but these may be able to help you:

http://www.macissues.com/2014/04/10/how-to-make-a-custom-fusion-drive-in-os-x/

http://www.cnet.com/how-to/how-to-make-a-custom-corestorage-drive-in-os-x/

 

I have read that this can cause issues when used as a boot drive, but there is likely a workaround for this. Best of luck

There's a fusion drive in my work iMac. I've looked into using it for a hackintosh before but I came to the conclusion that I don't like having control on what is on the SSD or the HDD.