FreeBSD 9 booting from a 3 disks ZFS
I already managed to boot FreeBSD from ZFS ; a single disk ZFS pool. Now, let’s see how to boot FreeBSD-9-RELEASE from a ZFS pool made of 3 disks using RAIDZ configuration.
I used the FreeBSD-9.0-RELEASE-amd64-dvd1.iso CD-ROM image.
ZFS root using Debian GNU/kFreeBSD
For a while now FreeBSD had ZFS included. Since 8.x, revision 28 is available. The thing is, I don’t really like the FreeBSD package management ; but I love Debian’s one. Here’s the way to provide a stable Kernel with a decent system management on a powerful filesystem.
The installation is done on a virtual machine. The multiple disk configuration has no really use here either than looking at how to do it.
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Quick speed test on ICYBOX IB-RD2262 USEb
As you may have noticed, I have installed a ICYBOX IB-RD2262 USEb on my MacBook Pro. It contains two 500GB SATA disks. You can either use the “RAID Master” provided tools to create the RAID system or use the Mac OS X native RAID system. The main difference is that, using RAID Master, you’ll only see the rendered RAID disk in “Disk Util” ; whereas you will see both disks and the RAID system if you use the standard OS X configuration.
I wanted to check if there were any performance difference between native OS X configuration and RAID0/SPAN using RAID Master. Maybe using RAID Master, you benefit some hardware RAID system…
Installing ICYBOX IB-RD2262 USEb on a MacBook Pro
I got an ICYBOX IB-RD2262USEb RAID Enclosure for 2.5″ HDDs to plug some of my spare SATA disks into my Mac.
This enclosure has two main benefits. It enables me to plug my external 2.5″ disks using Firewire-800, which is faster and less CPU consuming than USB2, and it enables me to plug the two disks using a single cable. Another nice feature is that is also has an eSATA plug so that I may later connect it to my Synology.
So what I did is plug a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB and Western Digital WD5000BEVT 500GB inside the box. Then use the Firewire-800 cable to connect them to my Mac.
First good new : the Firewire-800 cable gives enough power to bring both disks on. No need for additional power supply.
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