Mac Mini early 2009 used as Media Center with several USB disks: Does ZFS fits for me?

[Alberto Martínez]

Hello everybody,

I have at home a Mac Mini early 2009 (3,1) with OSX 10.8.5 used mainly to watch films, but also to act as a music library, and to hold Time Machine backups from the other Macs on the local network.

Currently I have 3 external USB hard disks (1TB+1.5TB+3TB. Two of them are WD My books, and the other is a Verbatim one). Each one has its independent partition, and the biggest one also holds the Time Machine backup. Recently, one (the biggest) failed, so I'm changing it right now under warranty, but that made me think about having a better setup, more fault-tolerant, setup, using some RAID5 setup. But after googling for 2 days, I ended here, reading a lot about ZFS and its features. It looks really interesting, and like it should fit my needs. I've been reading also about problems with USB hard disk, but also some say that My books are not really problematic.

I will hold mainly films, that I can retrieve again from the Internet if needed. The only important thing I want to keep are the Time Machine backups, but again, are not extreme crucial (the crucial files from each computer are also on the cloud ;) ). I mean that they can fail one day, like now, and I can wait some days until I replace the disk and keep working later.

Do you think ZFS can help me to have a bigger single partition, to help me simplify my setup? I suppose that, once it's working, I shouldn't need to check or work on it very often, right?

Thank you in advance and regards from Norway!

[Jason Belec]

I use a 2007 Mac Mini and ZFS on 6 drives 3 mirrored sets of 2 for data security. Very reliable for the movies, tv shows, music and various other backups. I run iTunes off this setup as well as iPhoto libraries so all those things important to the other half are protected. ;)

Please read the wiki about USB, or simple don't use.

With the drives you list your not going to get the benefit of ZFS as drives should be same size and type not necessarily brand. Personal experience for me is to stay away from WD. If you use modern 4K drives please ensure you ashift the pool before you put data on them? Again, the wiki is your friend here.

Yes to the partition size. You can also expand by swapping all the drives to larger drives later on, please familiarize yourself before attempting. You should also have another setup at some point for storage of archival of whatever is being actively used. ZFS has amazing ability to keep data, but a bad cable, bad controller, etc., can be scary and a backup of your working stuff makes things easier. That said I've had my setup mentioned above running through all that for years without any worries, BUT I do have a backup to negate Murphy's Law.

I have 50TB of pool storage on site for my business stuff for a comparison and everyone of my client locations has 4 disk zraid and a 2 disk mirror for priority backups that are also sent offsite over the web daily. Very efficient and safe as I can rebuild any of those pools of data from that information.

Norway is a wonderful place. Hello from Canada!

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Jason Belec

Sent from my iPad

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[Alberto Martínez]

Hi Jason!

Thanks for your answer! Let me ask: if you are using a Mac Mini with ZFS, how are you connecting them? The Mac Mini has no internal room for 6 HDDs, even if they are 2,5" ;). Maybe using Firewire? Is Firewire recommended instead? If so, I can try to find external enclosures for the HDDs to chain-plug them using FW-800 (The Mini has one).

I've reading the Wiki since yesterday, but I find it's missing some beginners information like that (use similar capacity disks, or how many disk are the minimum needed for each RAID level (Z1, Z2), or how much space will one loose for parity checking, for example. Maybe it's already there, but I have not found it yet :(.

About the software itself: is it easy to update when a new one is released? Is it possible to expand the RAIDZ to add more disks or to replace old ones with new ones?

And about the different capacity disks, I'm thinking about one idea that maybe the stupid question of the week, but maybe not:

Being my actual 3 HDDs:

1TB

1.5TB

3TB

could I create one RAIDZ1 using only 1TB+1TB+1TB from each HDD to have a safe place for backups, and the other 0.5+2TB from the second and third disks to make another RAID0 (or equivalent) 2.5TB partition for films for example? I think I've read somewhere that using partial portions of the disks affects the performance negatively. Is it right?

Canada!! I think Norway and Canada are almost the same, but with a different language ;). Quiet and beautiful countries :)

Alberto

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[Jason Belec]

They have these little hacks for older Mac Minis which replace the wifi card with SATA connector that allows multiport. It won't work for your 2009 you got the transition year before Thunderbolt. You can google Mac mini 2009 for such hacks I remember a few cool options but lots of work. You could get a Firewire HUB (dont't daisy chain - bad), kinda pricey as you need each drive to have a FireWire connector added and the cables but it will work I've used them a couple times in the past. My best advice is get a 2008 mini or go thunderbolt mini and you should see a thread on the forum from a few days ago discussing that.

Please read the wiki and ZFS in general documentation. Do this before starting anything. Save yourself the heartache and headache associated with jumping into ZFS unaware. Don't get me wrong, it's super easy, 2 main commands, amazing flexibility and unprecedented data retention, assuming you have it understood.

You cannot expand a RAIDZ, you can grow it with larger disks but the initial number of disks is set. You can build a pool with more disks and just send everything over, BUT the larger the pool the longer it will take to scrub for health I have 2 that take 3 days each. ;)

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Jason Belec

Sent from my iPad

[Alberto Martínez]

Hi again Jason,

Great information in your posts! And great advices too! Yes, I agree with you: the data should be the last thing one play with. I can get a lot of headaches if I do things wrong, so I will follow your advices before doing anything and will read wiki and this group to be sure before proceeding. It's just I'm always curious about new technologies and improvements I can do to make my life easier. I did a big step into that direction the day I bought a MacBook 5 years ago ;)

Thank you again!