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Forum Discussion
ssands
Mar 15, 2016Guide
Ultra 2 - RAID 0 volume not expanding
Hi all, Apologies in advance if this is covered elsewhere, but I did not find it. I have an Ultra 2 with Frontview 4.2.26 (I think that's correct, it's not in front of me now, but it is the l...
- Mar 16, 2016
Hi ssands,
Welcome to the community!
If the RAID volume is set to 0 and you started with just single (1) drive and planning to add a new one, there's no other way but to back up the data and reset the system with both drives installed.
Kind regards,
BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team
StephenB
Mar 16, 2016Guru
Page 38 of the user manual ( http://documentation.netgear.com/ultra/enu/202-10654-01/usermanual_1.pdf ) implies that you can add a disk to an existing RAID-0 volume.
Though I don't recommend doing that, because the resulting RAID-0 volume is quite fragile. If either disk fails, you lose everything.
ssands
Mar 16, 2016Guide
StephenB wrote:Page 38 of the user manual ( http://documentation.netgear.com/ultra/enu/202-10654-01/usermanual_1.pdf ) implies that you can add a disk to an existing RAID-0 volume.
Though I don't recommend doing that, because the resulting RAID-0 volume is quite fragile. If either disk fails, you lose everything.
Yes, that is the page I've poured over, and can't understand why I can't add a disc and expand my logical volume. Quite perplexing. It seems that the manual is in fact, stating that I can do that.
I do understand that raid 0 offers nothing in the way of resiliance and am ok with that. It holds my media, which is backed up to the cloud, and is recoverable, even it if takes a bit of time to get it all back.
So, I am confused by the earlier comment that you can't do what I want to do when you start with a single disc as Raid 0 when the manual does seem to imply otherwise.
It sure seems like a feature of the software.
- mdgm-ntgrMar 17, 2016NETGEAR Employee Retired
I believe only RAID-5 and RAID-6 are supported for Flex-RAID expansion on the Ultra. The screenshot in the manual shows it for RAID-5.
- StephenBMar 17, 2016Guru
mdgm wrote:
I believe only RAID-5 and RAID-6 are supported for Flex-RAID expansion on the Ultra. The screenshot in the manual shows it for RAID-5.
I'm sure you are correct on the limitations, but the documentation unfortunately doesn't say that.
Flex-RAID advantages include:
• The default volume can be deleted and re-created, with or without snapshot reserved space.
• Hot spare disk is supported.
• Volume expansion without data loss is supported.
• Full volume management is available. You can create RAID level 0, 1, 5, or 6 volumes, specify the volume size, delete a disk from a volume, assign a hot spare, and so on.
• Multiple volumes are supported, each with a different RAID level, snapshot schedule, and disk quota definition.
• Each disk can be replaced, one by one, then rebuilt; after the last disk is replaced, another data volume using the newly added capacity can be configured.
The fact that some of these features are limited to specific RAID modes isn't stated anywhere, and it isn't reasonable to expect users to infer those limitations from a screenshot.
Though of course the product is EoL, there wasn't enough explanation on flexraid.
- ssandsMar 17, 2016Guide
First of all, I want to thank you all for the responses. Yes, the manual implies functionality that is not present (sadly for me).
As avid (I assume :smileyhappy:) ReadyNas users, I have a question for you.
ReadyNAS users purchase these products with an intent of storing, preserving, and accessing data that is important to them. This implies a long-term committment to and care for their data.
But I am a bit surprised that NetGear would EOL a bunch of their products. Especially when others are porting the new OS6 software to the older products (again indicating that those older products could be supported).
I understand tech lifecycles (very well), but am now considering a re-evaluation of my investment in NetGear ReadyNAS.
I am curious as to what others think about the EOL of a whole line of hardware and why they would continue to use NetGear as opposed to some of the competitors (which I have not checked to determine how they are EOL'ing their products).
Thanks again.
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