Isso é possível com o RAID-Z, conforme descrito pelo ZFS Guia de administração :
When a replacement device that is greater in size than the device it is replacing is added to a pool, is not automatically expanded to its full size. The
autoexpand
pool property value determines whether a pool is expanded to its full size when the disk is added to the pool. By default, theautoexpand
property is disabled. You can enable this property to expand a pool's size before or after the larger disk is added to the pool.
Isso não é necessariamente recomendado, porque resilvering as unidades após cada substituição pode levar a long time e o processo pode ser estressante nas unidades.