UFS zfs vs ufs +journalling for 4 large usb3 disks? each 4 5 5 6 t

[Hastur]

I have 4 large usb3 disks attached to desktop with freebsd 14 ufs with journaling enabled on each.
What would be the advantage of zfs 1 stripe using all 4 disks?
I had problem in past with rebooting and the zfs getting confused I think due to devices getting different /dev/daX numbers.
So I sayed away from ZFS.

 

[chungy]

What would be the advantage of zfs 1 stripe using all 4 disks?

You'd combine the space of all four disks into a single volume. It comes at the major risk that any one of them failing means losing all data. ZFS is often used for its redundancy features; mirrors, raidz, raidz2 would all improve disaster recovery at the cost of capacity.

I had problem in past with rebooting and the zfs getting confused I think due to devices getting different /dev/daX numbers.

Don't add vdevs to a pool using these names, use stable names only. I'd highly recommend setting GPT labels on the partitions you use for ZFS vdevs, where you'd then use names in /dev/gpt/*. Partition UUIDs are a decent alternative too, using /dev/gptid/*.

 

[ralphbsz]

I had problem in past with rebooting and the zfs getting confused I think due to devices getting different /dev/daX numbers.

ZFS should not care. If you build a zpool out of /dev/da0p1, /dev/da1p1 ... /dev/da3p1, and after the next reboot the devices are called /dev/foo, /dev/bar, /dev/blatz and /dev/fozzie_bear, ZFS should find them when traversing all devices.

But I agree with chungy's advice: when partitioning, give all your partitions sensible names, and use the names whenever possible. It makes administration so much easier.