ZFS Data Loss Scenarios, in particular the accepted answer.
Impact of L2ARC cache device failure (Nexenta)L2ARCHere with a USB flash drive as L2ARC for my home directory (gjp22), ZEVO seems suitability resilient to planned and unplanned work without that drive. For planned work without that drive, I either:
- start the Mac without the drive; or
- in Terminal, use a macro for the required command (below) before disconnection:
- Code: Select all
zpool offline gjp22 GPTE_64F61AFF-9EBC-4661-9520-7803CD1B8EE4
Taking the L2ARC part of the pool offline is easy enough.
Absolute removal from the pool, I don't know.
ZILFrom what I read, it seems advisable to be more careful with ZIL. Don't simply pull the plug, and so on.
The 160 GB hard disk drive on FireWire 400I don't imagine that L2ARC or ZIL will be a good use.
If it's a few years old, accept the likelihood of not using it for much longer.
I have a FireWire 800 hard disk drive that's showing its age … occasional errors when scrubbed - but so far, not enough for me to throw it away. I set
copies=2 and use it for Time Machine backups of data that is not mission critical. A permanent error might affect a band in the sparse bundle disk image that's written by Time Machine, but before long that band will probably be 'demoted' to ZFS snapshot level. That's far from best practice, but for me it's a realistic use of old hardware that I don't want to add to a larger pool. YMMV.