MEATBALLHERO
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Can i create a FREE or low cost frankenstein NAS server with all these spare disks
I have several server cases with multiple bays. (one is a 12 bay tower) multiple hard disks from IDE to SATA to SAS. I even have raid cards from 4 port, 8, and 16 port laying around unused.
Can i create some sort of frankenstein NAS but not lose disk space because of mismatched raid? Or if I do mismatch drives like having a 200GB with a 250GB in raid 1 = 200Gb, can I combine several raid 1 sets to look like one big drive?
I have several pairs of drives 2-150GB Pair from a raid 1, 2- 40GB Pair from a raid 1, 4 80GB Pairs from a raid 10, 2 60Gb Drives from another raid 1.
I heard of DYNAMIC DISK POOLING or Software that allows you to combine raid sets to look like one big drive. So instead of 3 Raid 1 sets at 100GB each it would just look like one 300GB Drive.
My goal is to recycle a lot of the stuff laying around but I need redundancy. I want to make sure I don't lose any of the files on this should a drive fail. But I don't want a bunch of small raid sets. I want to make one or two big partitions out of all the drives. I hope this makes sense.
Any suggestions?
Can i create some sort of frankenstein NAS but not lose disk space because of mismatched raid? Or if I do mismatch drives like having a 200GB with a 250GB in raid 1 = 200Gb, can I combine several raid 1 sets to look like one big drive?
I have several pairs of drives 2-150GB Pair from a raid 1, 2- 40GB Pair from a raid 1, 4 80GB Pairs from a raid 10, 2 60Gb Drives from another raid 1.
I heard of DYNAMIC DISK POOLING or Software that allows you to combine raid sets to look like one big drive. So instead of 3 Raid 1 sets at 100GB each it would just look like one 300GB Drive.
My goal is to recycle a lot of the stuff laying around but I need redundancy. I want to make sure I don't lose any of the files on this should a drive fail. But I don't want a bunch of small raid sets. I want to make one or two big partitions out of all the drives. I hope this makes sense.
Any suggestions?
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You can't mix the disk types - IDE, SATA, SAS. Furthermore, you if you mix sizes or speeds you'll end up with the lowest common denominator.
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None of the answers had a FREE solution but were very helpful for educational and good to know.
OpenSolaris and the variations ARE free. Just not the Oracle Solaris.