FreeNAS vs Linux + btrfs + ?

[nfriedly]

Hi folks, I'm looking into setting up a home file server for media and backups, and I'm a bit split between FreeNAS with zfs and raid-z vs rolling my own thing with Linux and btrfs/raid-5 and such.

The main issue is that I'm cheap and only want to buy two new drives to supplement the one that I already have. The problem is that it's currently full of data!

I'm pretty sure that btrfs will let me build a smaller array with the new drives, copy the data over, and then expand the array to include the old drive. But zfs won't allow that, at least not as simply, so I'd either have my old drive sitting around unused, or else have to double the size of the array.

Does anyone here have experience with this and/or suggestions?

 

[jhu]

If the newer drives are larger, you could make a new RAID 1 zpool with the two new drives and copy the data over from the old drive.

 

[nfriedly]

My plan was to have the new drives be the same size and then set up a 3-drive RAID so that I have 2x the current space. But I don't see any way to do that with zfs aside from something like 4th temp drive or else burning a ton of blu-ray discs.

(Current drive is 3TB, and essentially full. I'd like to end up with at least 6TB of total space so that I have another 3TB free and also have safety against a drive dying. I could buy two 6TB drives and RAID-1 like you said, but that costs a lot more than buying two (or even three) 3TB drives.)

 

[jhu]

My plan was to have the new drives be the same size and then set up a 3-drive RAID so that I have 2x the current space. But I don't see any way to do that with zfs aside from something like 4th temp drive or else burning a ton of blu-ray discs.

(Current drive is 3TB, and essentially full. I'd like to end up with at least 6TB of total space so that I have another 3TB free and also have safety against a drive dying. I could buy two 6TB drives and RAID-1 like you said, but that costs a lot more than buying two (or even three) 3TB drives.)

What you could do is buy 1 more drive that matches the size of the original drive and make 2 mirrored pools. That would probably be the easiest thing to do. Or stop downloading so much porn.