this post was submitted on 16 Jul 2024
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Referencing: https://lemmy.world/post/17588348

I want to make a NAS with a 500GB boot drive and 2x16TB HDDs. Based on my previous post, btrfs is a good option. It also looks easy to get started. My plan for the NAS would be to purchase several 16TB drives, and only use 2 of them.

My first question is about different drives. Could I purchase two different brand drives and use them with btrfs? (I assume yes)

2nd question: how does the replacement process go? Like if drive A died, so I remove it, and put a brand new replacement in. What do I have to do with btrfs to get the raid 1 back going? Any links or guides would be amazing.

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[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

This is a good guide: https://wiki.tnonline.net/w/Btrfs/Replacing_a_disk

Usually you want to replace drives before they fail (SMART monitoring will give you ample warning in most cases). The it is better to have an additional free SATA port to turn the failing raid temporarily into a three-way raid and use the btrfs built-in function to replace the disk in situ.

[–] eco_game@discuss.tchncs.de 1 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Could I purchase two different brand drives and use them with btrfs?

I don't quite remember the source for this, but I believe I read some time ago that it's actually a good thing to have separate drives. The reasoning is, if you buy two identical drives (at the same time), the likelyhood of both drives failing around the same time is severely higher.

This is then amplified by the fact that rebuilding a RAID puts a lot of strain on the non-dead drive, so if ie. drive 1 dies and drive 2 is about to die, the strain you put on drive 2 in order to rebuild your RAID onto drive 3 might kill drive 2 before you even finish rebuilding your RAID.

Again, this is just from my memory, it might be worth doing some more research on.

[–] possiblylinux127@lemmy.zip 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It is better to have more drives and less apares. However, btrfs is only stable in raid 1. With data that big I would go ZFS raidz2 as you can lose up to 2 drives.

From a btrfs perspective it is pretty easy as you just can run btrfs replace with the path of the new drive. Btrfs also has the benefit of being native

[–] saiarcot895@programming.dev 1 points 1 year ago

BTRFS is stable for all RAID levels except for RAID 5 and 6 (because of the write hole). I'm using it with RAID 10.

[–] floofloof@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (3 children)

Is btrfs RAID stable yet? This article is three years old, so maybe things have improved, but it contains some pretty strong warnings about the dangers of btrfs RAID:

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2021/09/examining-btrfs-linuxs-perpetually-half-finished-filesystem/

To summarize, the article argues that btrfs is great for single-disk usage but its RAID implementations are idiosyncratic and unreliable.

(I use btrfs daily on several single-disk computers and it has been great, but I have never tried its RAID.)

[–] poVoq@slrpnk.net 1 points 1 year ago

Mirror (raid1) btrfs raids are fine and are more convenient anyways.

[–] czardestructo@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Been using it for over a year on two 8tb SSDs in strip and 14tb as mirror. This is on Debian and its flawless and wonderful. I run btrkbk hourly for snapshots, backups to remote locations and house keeping with 6 months of hourly snaps. Life is great.