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Date:      Sat, 1 Nov 2008 12:37:59 +0100
From:      Lars Engels <lme@FreeBSD.org>
To:        Nicolas Martyanoff <khaelin@gmail.com>
Cc:        current@freebsd.org
Subject:   Re: ZFS for a desktop computer
Message-ID:  <20081101113759.GW8256@e.0x20.net>
In-Reply-To: <20081101114717.0ffc2ec8@valhala>
References:  <20081101114717.0ffc2ec8@valhala>

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On Sat, Nov 01, 2008 at 11:47:17AM +0100, Nicolas Martyanoff wrote:
>=20
> Hi,
>=20
> I'm thinking about switching my main desktop to FreeBSD for various
> reasons (main one, I love it on my laptop and server), and I've been
> considering using ZFS. I'd like to have a disk-modular system, ie.:
>=20
> - Being able to have mirroring.
> - Being able to add new disks without effort.
> - Being able to add new disks AND mirroring disks (spare disks ?) at
>   the same time.
>=20
> I'm gonna begin with 2x 1TB disks with mirroring, and I'd like to be
> able to add, if needed, new disks, for example 2x 1.5TB to get 2.5TB
> diskspace fully mirrored. The whole process shouldn't need to reinstall
> the system, or to change the slice/partition layout, ie. be totally
> transparent for the data.
> And for this particular need, ZFS seems to be the way to go.
>=20
> However, I'm a bit worried about FreeBSD's ZFS implementation:
>=20
> - I've got a 64bits dual core 2GHz CPU, but can't use an amd64 FreeBSD
>   since Xen, NVidia drivers and wine don't work on it; but ZFS is said
>   to be unsuitable for i386.
>=20
> - It's said you can't boot from a ZFS pool.
>=20
> So could you please tell me if using ZFS is ok for me, or should I use
> a gmirror system (but I don't think I can easily add new disks to this).
>=20
> Thank you.

You could try PC-BSD. There you can install the system with ZFS from the
graphical installer.=20

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