Moving array to ZFS, what is the most efficient method to do this?

[wickedathletes]

So I have a 14 disk, 2 parity array of 146TB. I have 20TB free, and most of my drives are 8 or 14tb drives. What is the most effective and efficient way to convert this array to ZFS? I believe when I switched to XFS a long time ago I manually moved files within Dolphin, formatted the drive then moved files back. That sounds like an awful process now that my array is 60+TB more. Should I use mover? Something else? Just looking for efficiency to not have this process take 2 months.

[itimpi]

Unfortunately it is basically the same process.   
 

what are you trying to achieve by this conversion?   Trying to see if you are expecting something that will not happen.

[MAM59]

I'm currently doing the same (but only 74Tb to shuffle 🙂 )

The only working way is to free a disk from data (move it elsewhere), reformat it to zfs and then move the next disk to the freshly formatted one. Repeat until the cows come home.

Sadly I did not have had enough free space to be able to sum up 2 partitially full drives into 1 really full, so that I could format it. I had to buy a new 18Tb to start copying.

 

But now I am already on the last disk, I guess it will be done in 2 or 3 days.

 

But BEWARE!. I (and some others) ran into a bad 6.12 bug that slows copy speed to snail level! Read

 

for this (with link to solution) and save yourself some weeks of waiting!

[wickedathletes]

1 hour ago, itimpi said:

Unfortunately it is basically the same process.   
 

what are you trying to achieve by this conversion?   Trying to see if you are expecting something that will not happen.

I really don't have a reason other than just wanting to, which sounds really dumb when said out loud. I guess I can hold off, I just know this will probably be the only time in the near future I actually have MORE space than my largest drive so the timing is now or never. It's been about 5 years since this has happened, joys of a full server.

[david279]

You'd do better creating a large pool with some redundancy like raidz2 and just move the data there. But converting each disk over to zfs for the hell of it is just not worth it.