Overview
General discussion of pros and cons, mixed approaches and so on.
Primarily for users of OS X, but some approaches (e.g. NAS) may be multi-purpose – not limited to Macs.
Hint: if your experiences with storage contradict the experiences of other writers, be gentle with each other. Such contradictions will be inevitable. Let's not go off the rails
Related
In MacRumors Forums:
My current and expected future approaches
2009 MacBook Pro (MacBookPro5,2) with a hybrid drive in lieu of the original hard disk. That hybrid comprises two Core Storage logical volumes:
Amongst the child file systems in the ZFS pool:
A small number of external hard disk drives and USB flash drives given to ZFS. Typically connected via USB 2.0 to the MacBookPro5,2.
FreeNAS on an old Dell Inspiron 545 that was gifted to me. One of two internal disks given to ZFS.
Wuala, 5 GB free.
Before Yosemite is released, I expect to begin using a new MacBook Pro.
Over the next year or so, I expect to move as much data as is practical:
When the time comes to replace the 2014 MacBook Pro – 2019, maybe – I'll probably choose – or be forced to use – something other than OS X.
Side note: tiering and ZFS
From the title of a 2012 blog post – ZFS Auto-Tiered Storage: Conquering I/O Bottlenecks w/Hybrid Storage – it may be assumed that automated tiered storage is a fitting description for those features of ZFS.
A brief discussion in IRC, mid-2013, took the view that hierarchical storage management (as then defined in Wikipedia) was probably a better way to describe the tiering that's possible with ZFS. A few months later in a private forum, someone argued that HSM was entirely different … that argument was overly antagonistic, so for now I'll stick with the HSM thought.
General discussion of pros and cons, mixed approaches and so on.
Primarily for users of OS X, but some approaches (e.g. NAS) may be multi-purpose – not limited to Macs.
Hint: if your experiences with storage contradict the experiences of other writers, be gentle with each other. Such contradictions will be inevitable. Let's not go off the rails
Related
In MacRumors Forums:
- MacBook Pro SSD Buying Guide (2011) – extensive, with some pros and cons, but much of the discussion is off-topic from purchase of solid state for that type of notebook
- RAID 0 ssd in MacBook Pro 2011 (yesterday) – "I'd like to post some more links relating to flash and solid state, from a private forum a few months ago, but Apple Hardware is not the ideal heading for such things …"
- hard disk drive
- hybrid drive
- solid-state drive
- network-attached storage (NAS)
- file hosting service – consumer-level (cloud storage is defined as enterprise-level)
- automated tiered storage
- hierarchical storage management (HSM).
- Storage Forum
- Final Words – Investigation: Is Your SSD More Reliable Than A Hard Drive? (2011-07-28)
- Tape vs SSDs backups regarding long-term storage reliability – Server Fault (2011-01-08)
- What is the likelihood of data loss in a failed SSD vs HDD? – Server Fault (2013-01-21)
- Data safety: How error-prone are SSDs compared to HDDs – Super User (2013-11-22)
My current and expected future approaches
2009 MacBook Pro (MacBookPro5,2) with a hybrid drive in lieu of the original hard disk. That hybrid comprises two Core Storage logical volumes:
- HFS Plus – startup volume for OS X, applications etc.
- ZFS pool – for a variety of data
Amongst the child file systems in the ZFS pool:
- ~/Library/VirtualBox
- /opt
A small number of external hard disk drives and USB flash drives given to ZFS. Typically connected via USB 2.0 to the MacBookPro5,2.
FreeNAS on an old Dell Inspiron 545 that was gifted to me. One of two internal disks given to ZFS.
Wuala, 5 GB free.
Before Yosemite is released, I expect to begin using a new MacBook Pro.
Over the next year or so, I expect to move as much data as is practical:
- from the MacBookPro5,2 internal drive, from drives on USB 2.0 and from Wuala
- to FreeNAS – for a while, I might run two servers.
When the time comes to replace the 2014 MacBook Pro – 2019, maybe – I'll probably choose – or be forced to use – something other than OS X.
Side note: tiering and ZFS
From the title of a 2012 blog post – ZFS Auto-Tiered Storage: Conquering I/O Bottlenecks w/Hybrid Storage – it may be assumed that automated tiered storage is a fitting description for those features of ZFS.
A brief discussion in IRC, mid-2013, took the view that hierarchical storage management (as then defined in Wikipedia) was probably a better way to describe the tiering that's possible with ZFS. A few months later in a private forum, someone argued that HSM was entirely different … that argument was overly antagonistic, so for now I'll stick with the HSM thought.
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