RN104 Redundant Space after adding disk - no effect of adding extra disk
I have a ReadyNAS RN104 running firmware 6.10.3
I originally had 4x4TB drives in this, running well. When I received a log message indicating that storage was running low and that the volume was degraded, I decided to add an extra drive. Before adding, the available space remaining was around 500Gb.
I bought a 12TB Western Digital drive to replace one of the 4 drives. This meant I would have 3x4TB drives and 1x12TB drive. The 12TB drive is in bay 4 (channel 4). After replacing, and waiting around 4 days for a resync, I got the messages
Disk: Disk in channel 4 (Internal) changed state from RESYNC to ONLINE. Apr 29, 2020 11:03:09 PM Volume: Volume data health changed from Degraded to Redundant. Apr 29, 2020 11:03:08 PM Volume: Volume data is resynced.
Looking at the available space, I still only had around 500Gb of space remaining, and the log message about Redundant.
I looked up the WD 12TB disk in the list of recommended drives, and saw that it wasn't in the list, so initially thought it was because of that, and an incompatability issue. I bought a Toshiba MG05ACA800E 8TB drive, which is one of the recommended ones from Netgear's list.
I replaced the 12TB drive in bay 4 with the Toshiba 8TB drive, waited the 4 days for resync, and am now getting the same message.
Volume: Less than 5% of volume data's capacity is free. data's performance is degraded and you risk running out of usable space. To improve performance and stability, you must add capacity or make free space. May 06, 2020 12:34:50 AM System: The system is rebooting. May 06, 2020 12:30:17 AM Disk: Disk in channel 4 (Internal) changed state from RESYNC to ONLINE. May 06, 2020 12:30:16 AM Volume: Volume data health changed from Degraded to Redundant. May 06, 2020 12:30:16 AM Volume: Volume data is resynced.
Basically it seems that adding extra space via a larger drive hasn't increased my available space, and there is a Redundant message appearing.
Has anyone any advice here? Have I basically got some concept wrong? Can I not just add a larger drive and get more space? I realise I would have the overhead that all NAS drives have for the backup, but surely extra space would be added still?
Any suggestions welcome!
I can post extra info if needed.
Model: RN10400|ReadyNAS 100 Series 4- Bay (Diskless)
If you're ReadyNAS is on X-RAID configuration, you will have to replace 2 of your disks in order to vertically expand your volume and change the capacity of it. If on Flex-RAID, you will have to change all disks.
Thanks for that advice! So if I put in another larger drive, it should then show up ok?
Yes (another 12 TB drive).
The capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest". To expand more in the future, you'll need to upgrade using 12 TB drives (or larger).
Two cautions:
The RN100 series has a lot less RAM than the other models (512MB instead of 2 GB or more), and also has a slowest processor in the OS-6 product family. Resyncs will be much slower with the larger disks, and you might run out of memory if you put too much data on it. So you might need to upgrade the NAS to a newer model. I don't think you need to take action on that right away, but it is something to pay attention to.
Also, RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe - you need backup(s) to a different device to do that. So if you don't have a backup plan in place already, you really should do that. And you'll need to expand the backup capacity as you increase the storage on the NAS. FWIW, backups are less expensive than data recovery in the long run (and data recovery often isn't successful).
