Raid5 newbie - questions

Hi. I plan on converting my media server from Freenas 7 to OMV. I've read through a lot of the OMV documentation and forums, but still have some questions.

My current Freenas set up has 6 2TB disks. I have them set up as two sets of JBOD's (6TB each), with one set being the primary source for my media clients, and the other set being a backup (I use local rsync to back up from the main JBOD to the backup JBOD each night).

1. For my new OMV setup, I'm thinking of using a Raid5 setup and adding all 6 disks to it. Would Raid5 be my best option? (I have another server that I plan to back up my media files to on a weekly basis).

2. When a drive fails in the Raid5, I understand all I do is replace the bad drive with a new drive (of same capacity), and the Raid rebuilds itself. Do I need to power down the system to replace the bad drive? Are all the files accessible to my media clients while it is rebuilding?

3. Since the family needs their media while I do all my conversions (!!) I was planning on starting my OMV build using the 3 backup drives from my freenas first. I would set them up as a Raid5, then transfer all my files from my freenas to OMV. Once done and working, I would shut down freenas then point all my media clients to the new OMV. Then I wanted to add the remaining 3 drives to my OMV and grow the Raid5. Will the media files be accessible to the clients while I grow my Raid5? And do I have to grow it one disk at a time, or can I grow it with all 3 drives at once?

Thanks for the help!

Zitat von "DaveVM"

... It sounds like you have more than 4Tb of data on the present 3 2Tb JBOD set up. And if so it won't work because a 3 drive Raid 5 set up will only give 4Tb of data storage. You would need a fourth 2Tb drive to get 6Tb of data storage.

Thanks for the response Dave. I actually have just a tad under 4TB of files right now on the JBOD. If it doesn't all fit, I can copy over some of the material later from my backups. And I was planning on running the OS on a 60GB USB HDD (to save the sata slots on the mobo for the raid disks)

Any advice on the other questions?

And one additional question: I currently have 2GB memory on my freenas machine. Would there be any benefit in upgrading the OMV machine to 4 or 8GB? Its really only serving the media files to my media clients (XBMC's) once I transfer everything over (would additional memory help speed up the raid building or file transfers??)