Home Server - disk pooling a la windows home server

[leejayd]

Hi,

I'm planning to use FreeNas to serve files around my house. I have 4 hard drives for storage with different sizes.

I don't need redundancy hence I'm not keen on putting them into a RAID based pool.

However, I would like to pool the disks and present one logical drive to the network. Additionally, I'd like to be able to add additional disk to the pool and have the pool grow without having to re-build. This is similar to how Windows Home Server v1 works.

Is this possible to do in FreeNas?

What type of volume do I need to build?

Regards,

Lee

[Kimba]

Once a pool is established the only way you can increase its size is to replace the drives with larger drives. You should be warned however that the pool size will not increase until all drives have been replaced by a larger drive and a reboot. But if you do this follow the procedures carefully so you don't lose your data.

[Brand]

If you want WHS drive pooling functionality why not just use WHS? If you have no intention of using redundancy that ZFS offers I think that WHS would be a better choice. FreeNAS and ZFS are both great products but are not designed for every situation or everyone. I apologize in advance if this comes across the wrong way.

Why the need to post in two separate forums?

[luisvale]

Hi

I was in the same situation you are now about 1 month ago. Although my particular requirements took me to FreeNAS, I believe you could try to see if Windows 8 Storage Spaces is the solution you want. WHS current version does not do what you want. I tried Windows Server 8 beta, but I know that even Windows 8 desktop can use that pool functionality (if you can stand the lego blocks display ), and while they are in beta at the moment there is a free download for the moment, when they release it won't be for free

Best rgds

luis

[ProtoSD]

Why the need to post in two separate forums?

Lee, Brand is correct. Please don't cross post in two forum sections. The other section is for HowTo's, not for questions.