So I finally decided to build my first nas as a late Christmas present to myself. I've decided I'm going to buy unraid because I don't want to end up not being able to figure something out with command line on another free os. I've been watching tons of YouTube videos and reading through forums on zfs and unraid. I can't seem to find a definitive answer on the best configuration for 8 drives in something similar to a raid 6 on zfs. I've seen some people say that the ideal way is with 9 drives, 3 sets of 3, with a parity in each set. I've seen other people say that it works best with either 6 or 10 drives. 

 

I'm using recertified 18tb seagate exos 20 drives. 2 of them just showed up yesterday. I'm buying the rest 1 at a time because I've read that it's possible to get an entire bad batch and I don't want to risk that. I could make it 9 or 10 if it's going to make performance a lot better, but I already went well past what I need realistically. 

 

Not sure if the rest of my hardware could impact the answer to my question so here it is. 

 

Ryzen 5600G

Asrock  X570 Phantom Gaming 4

16GB ddr4 3200mhz cl16

Phantek case with 12 3.5 bays

A tier 750w PSU

10Gtek 10Gb NIC

 

Is it a bad idea to start with 2 or 3 drives and start putting data on it, and then add another one every few days as I get them? I know it supports expanding the array but it seems like it would be better to do it all at once. Just wondering. I look forward to being a part of the community. 

If you are purchasing all new matching sized drives I would not utilize the unraid array. I don't know too much about your needs the but the simplest solution would be to make a RAIDZ2 ZFS pool using all 8 drives. RAIDZ2 is the RAID6 equivalent in ZFS. Not only will this provide much better performance than what you would get on the unraid array it will also allow you to take full advantage of all of the ZFS features.

On 1/8/2024 at 10:38 AM, Drew6274 said:

If you are purchasing all new matching sized drives I would not utilize the unraid array. I don't know too much about your needs the but the simplest solution would be to make a RAIDZ2 ZFS pool using all 8 drives. RAIDZ2 is the RAID6 equivalent in ZFS. Not only will this provide much better performance than what you would get on the unraid array it will also allow you to take full advantage of all of the ZFS features.

Thanks. I've been thinking about at least attempting to use a raid z2 in TrueNAS scale before purchasing unraid. Some people say it's great, but I've also seen some really tech say people talking about lots of issues they've had with it. I thought that unraid supported ZFS now? So can't I do a raid z2 in unraid too? 

 

Why would I get much worse performance in unraid if it supports zfs? 

 

Also, since unraid runs off of a usb drive/ram, do I need a an ssd to for dockers/vms and things like qBitTorrent and plex? (Not sure if I'm saying that quite right this is all new to me lol) 

 

I finally got the system built and just put a 1tb ssd in it, should have all of my hard drives by Wednesday. I'm going to try installing TrueNAS to start. Going to wait on my unraid trial until I have everything installed