Somewhat related to the FreeNAS discussions: I am curious if anyone is aware of any drive pooling...

[G+_Matt Bonnett]

Somewhat related to the FreeNAS discussions: I am curious if anyone is aware of any drive pooling solutions ala Drive Extender from Windows Home Server.

 

I am one of those types that when it comes to technology I like to keep stuff in use as long as it is reasonably feasible and I have an actual use for it. Meaning I have a combination of 4 drives (80GB + 100 + 200 + 500) as my main storage pool. Majority of the data is either easily replaceable or is backed up on both my laptop and externally (namely about 5-10 gigs of family photos over ~10 years) so redundancy isn't even needed.

 

Used to be I just used a cheap NAS product like an Iomega iConnect which ran the individual drives as their own shares. Big libraries like videos would have to be split between drives and maintained manually as stuff is added.

 

Recently I upgraded my HTPC setup to a Pi and delegated the old P4 box (a nice relic. Northwood based P4 which is a lot more power efficient than it's Prescott bretheren) it replaced as a WHS box primarily for Drive Extender which is running great.

 

Thing is that WHS is seriously overkill for my current needs. And I like Windows as a desktop OS but in this specific case it is overly bloated for just needing the drive pooling solution. I'd like to shift it back to something linux based but can't find a good drive pooling solution that is comparable. Greyhole is about the best candidate but seems from my reading it is heavily dependent on Samba to the point it may be impossible for local file access on the box to access the 'pool' which would be an issue.

 

I've used LVM before and gotten used to how it operates but much like RAID it tends to not behave too well in a more 'ghetto' setup like this. DE is a nice system in that a drive removed from the pool still has its own data intact you can access separately as does the intact pool and its own data on those drives. It's hard to lose data here unless a drive legitimately and permanently fails and you are only out the data on that drive.

 

Thoughts?

[G+_Joe Schmoe]

I would try asking the FreeNas Community. 

 

https://plus.google.com/u/0/110373675402281849911/posts

[G+_Bryce Bolling]

FreeNAS might do it but the easiest solution for this IMHO is UnRaid.  Been using it for years and it is very easy to manage.

 

http://lime-technology.com

[G+_Matt Bonnett]

Sorry for not posting back sooner. Been checking into solutions off and on. a) From everything I have come across including direct answers from FreeNAS staff, it is not possible to do something like this with FreeNAS. b) unRaid looks like it gets close but not 100% and it limits to 3 drives unregistered. I do appreciate the suggestion though. :)

 

I do think I came across a solution which I will give a shot at once I can sit down and reconfigure the box. And that is something called MHDDFS (https://romanrm.net/mhddfs) which has packages in the main debian repos which is nice. And it does 100% of what I need with no cruft of what I don't.

 

Eventually I do want to replace these 4 drives with a newer and larger disk but for now this is servicable. :)