Jump to content
  • 0

Shrink a pool? (permanently remove a drive safely from the array)


Question

Posted (edited)

Can we have an easy way to permanently remove disks from a pool/array? Let's say I need go down by one drive because one is about to fail and I don't want to or can't replace it or because I don't need all that space or whatever. Or two, or three or more drives at a time. It's technically possible from within the CLI of TrueNas Scale. It's 100% not in the GUI.

I'm currently running StableBit Drive Pool (on Windows) for my NAS needs. It works perfectly for me. It's basically what you'd get if JBOD and RAID-1 had a baby. Any two or more drives, any capacity, it just works. At any point I can remove a drive either safely or to just yank it out and the software will duplicate any unduplicated files to the other drives. Expansion is even easier. Algorithms to deal with bit-rot. Preventative drive-checking and scanning.

As drives become bigger and bigger, the ideal number of drives for low-cost budget builds is 3 drives. That's the same number as the minimum required by RAID-5 when it's healthy. I don't want to have 4 or 6 or 8 drives in a computer. I don't need 100TB worth of storage and currently the HDD $/GB has a sweet spot somewhere between 12-20 TB depending on the make and model. Furthermore, SSD $/GB is really dropping and I predict that I'll only ever buy M.2 SSDs from now on and use PCIe expansion cards to mount them instead of using 2.5" SATA SSDs. To support this financial reality it'd be nice if HexOS allowed a good level of flexibility, especially when reducing the number of drives for whatever reason.

Edited by alexanderhuzar

1 answer to this question

Recommended Posts

  • 1
Posted
4 hours ago, alexanderhuzar said:

It's technically possible from within the CLI of TrueNas Scale.

I was going to respond with “OpenZFS doesn’t have any option to remove a drive from a zvol, except to turn a mirror into a single disk”, but now that you’ve said this my response is “please show an example of the commands that would be run”.

Join the conversation

You can post now and register later. If you have an account, sign in now to post with your account.
Note: Your post will require moderator approval before it will be visible.

Guest
Answer this question...

×   Pasted as rich text.   Paste as plain text instead

  Only 75 emoji are allowed.

×   Your link has been automatically embedded.   Display as a link instead

×   Your previous content has been restored.   Clear editor

×   You cannot paste images directly. Upload or insert images from URL.

×
×
  • Create New...