[OpenIndiana-discuss] HDD Upgrade problem

[michelle]

Broke the mirror and tried to a single drive and the backup worked; the 
combination of USB and e-sata was obviously upsetting it.

If only this Marvel chipset was supported then I could get the second 
e-sata channel working. Ah well.

After the backup was complete I have tried reconnecting and reformatting 
the 3tb drive but still the same error. I don't really want to 
retard/downgrade the 3tb drive's abilities.

It will be another two months before I have enough replacement 3tb 
drives; and where I'd copy the main chunk of data off to when I have 
them, I'm not sure as my plan was to use the 2tb drives as a backup.

With these extra problems/restrictions that are appearing when using the 
ZFS raidz, the lack of flexibility is starting to hurt. There was 
another restriction as well, I think it was something like not being 
able to dynamically add more drives to the set. But it was the promise 
of flexibility which is why I went for ZFS in the first place.

If anyone has any insight in to an alternative strategy than raidz that 
would keep the heat generation down but still give tolerance and ability 
to change hard drives without destroying the set, I'd be grateful to 
hear it. My current target is 6tb of data storage and I'm not confident 
enough with my low grade consumer items for a single mirror.

Thanks in advance for any advice.