Hi,
I'm on a mac pro and have approximately 4.1TB of data, but I suppose we should round that up to 4.5TB.
I have 5 working SATA ports.
At the moment I have 4 x 2TB drives and 1 x 1.5TB (9.5TB total...) where all data is duplicated using rsync. These are all separate volumes.
The 1.5TB drives is however failing, apparently. It is showing I/O errors in the console.
I am thinking I will get a 3TB seagate drive to replace it.
I cannot however figure out how I would configure my zfs pool without buying two 3TB drives.
The only way I could do it is if I have my startup volume as HFS+ of 500GB and then the remaining 1.5TB added to a pool along with two 2TB drives and have a second pool with the 3TB plus a 2TB drive.
Is this possible? Is this a bad idea?
How does it compare to the bad idea of creating a RAID array of the 4 x 2TB disks without having capacity for a full backup? I'd have a parity disk and I'd prioritise backing up the most important data to the 3TB disk.
Or, I could just make all my disks individual zfs volumes and continue my backup system as is with the added security blanket of zfs.
Thanks for your help!