suggestions for ground up household

[mk01]

(29th Aug, 2013 11:44 PM)rbthompsonv Wrote:  That being said, the Dell has had the DVD drive removed so i could run the 3 hard drives... Really, the only reason for 3 is that Windows (or the hardware itself... not sure) cant run the 2x2tb drives as a single 4tb drive natively.. I needed to install windows on the smaller (250gb drive) and use window's "Raid" style disk combiner to get the storage space... Would a linux distro allow me to run the 2x2tb drives as a single 4tb drive and lose the 250gb drive (possibly add a third 2tb drive for 6tb total?)

I know the design of Optiplex serie. There are four connectors onboard to connect disks so if put small SSD on side, you can have linux server booted under 3s with 3xHDD for storage. Yes, let the windows die. Each current up-t0-date distro ju take from internet will not only support multi disk combinations (provided to you as one logical, but even with GUI installer providing this. Maybe just Debian not, don't know. Choose Ubuntu and you will be even able to experiment with ZFS easily, as Ubuntu if officially currently only distro with packages ready just to install (speaking about ZFS). BTRFS is also natively supporting multi disk configurations, but with any linux you have possibility of using LVM which would allow you use at the end ANY filesystem with any configuration of the three disks.

And when you alone opened the question of different requirements for different usage cases, grab ZFS. This will allow you to create one POOL with 3xHDD so if 2TB big, then 6TB in total and allows you without limitations and anytime be crating / adjusting / sizes / block sizrs, compressions on top of it for as many filesystems as you want. So imagine it as a storage transforming itself based on your needs as you want without any hussles like repartitioning / resizing / backing data and restoring back etc.