[OpenIndiana-discuss] zfs and usb drives

[Bob Friesenhahn]

On Tue, 29 May 2012, Jay Heyl wrote:
>
> One idea is to use the external USB drives I've collected to create a
> separate pool for the non-critical data. I have four 2TB USB drives that
> have been performing flawlessly connected to Windows systems for quite a
> while. Any opinions on using them to set up another raidz pool? Is this a
> reasonable idea or a really bad idea?

I have been using USB drives in a mirror configuration for quite a few 
years with zfs.  No problems have been encountered due to using zfs. 
The main thing I learned is to always export the pool before 
unplugging the USB cables because the pool won't come back up if the 
cables are plugged into different ports than before.

Zfs scrub and resilver are obviously slower with USB drives.

I have heard that one should always plug the drives directly into the 
computer rather than into a USB bridge device.

Bob
-- 
Bob Friesenhahn
bfriesen at simple.dallas.tx.us, http://www.simplesystems.org/users/bfriesen/
GraphicsMagick Maintainer,    http://www.GraphicsMagick.org/