Just a whole bunch of disks & FreeNAS

[Noo]

I have 8 hard drives of various sizes (3) 400gb, (2) 750gb, and (3) 1tb for a total of 5.7TB.

Using FreeNAS, Is it possible to group all of them together as 1 drive and have 1 drive Parity while maintaining 5gb+ of usable space?

 

[smitbret]

I have 8 hard drives of various sizes (3) 400gb, (2) 750gb, and (3) 1tb for a total of 5.7TB.

Using FreeNAS, Is it possible to group all of them together as 1 drive and have 1 drive Parity while maintaining 5gb+ of usable space?

Not with FreeNAS. RAIDzX stripes everything so that every drive will be viewed as 400GB. You'd end up with 2.8TB using RAIDz1.

With something like unRAID, FlexRAID or SnapRAID you can get 4.7TB. You would lose the speed advantages of ZFS, but depending on your usage, you may not notice the difference.

 

[poofyhairguy]

Agreed, FreeNAS won't work. That is the whole problem with anything enterprise raid, they expect you to have almost every disk you want to have in they system day one all the same size because hell a company can afford that. Oh and you also need to afford that expensive ECC RAM. If you are a consumer who is piecemealing you need something other than an enterprise solution.

Your setup is screaming for Unraid. I have used it for 5 years on two systems and can recommend it wholeheartedly.

 

[Noo]

I guess i'll just stick with windows server for now. no need to go through all the hassle if it's not going to do with I wanted.

 

[smitbret]

I guess i'll just stick with windows server for now. no need to go through all the hassle if it's not going to do with I wanted.

If all your looking for is parity, then FlexRAID and SnapRAID both run on top of Windows. Just install and set up your array.