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2+2 Mixing different brand NAS Drives
Hello to Everyone,
I am wondering that my current NAS configuration is 2x6TB WD Red EFRX and 2x2TB WD Red 2TB EFRX with XRAID,
I also have (different brand) 2x4TB Toshiba N300 NAS drives, so can I use and replace these drives with 2x2TB WD Red,
my config will be 2x6TB (WD) + 2x4TB (Toshiba)?
Thanks in advance.
Leventh wrote:
I will go with replacing 2x2TB WD Red with 2x4TB Toshiba N300 drivers but I'm thinking how can I do that, while replacing two drives, all data also will be lost on a volume? Could you suggest a way set it up correctly?
Netgear does recommend backing up the data first. The reason is that the volume is unprotected during expansion and resync, so if a disk fails during the process you will lose all the data.
The process is to replace one drive at a time. I always recommend hot-swapping (while the NAS is running). Wait for the first drive to resync, and then hot-swap the second.
Unfortunately I gave you some misleading information on volume size earlier. If you were to do create a fresh XRAID volume, then 2x6+2x4TB would give you a 14 TB (12.7 TiB) volume . But if you simply replace the disks, the situation is a bit different, as you are adding intermediate size drives to your existing array. You might get a 2 TB size increase after the second drive increases, but you might end up with the same size volume have now. (One or two posters who did something similar did see a smaller size increase).
Technically, you have two RAID groups now - one is 4x2TB RAID-5 (6 TB storage), and the second is 2x4TB RAID-1 (4 TB storage). The second is filling the remaining space on the 6 TB disks. These are joined together into a single volume.
If you started over with a fresh volume, you'd end up with a 4x4TB RAID-5 group (12 TB storage) and a 2x2 TB RAID-1 group (2 TB).
But if you simply replace the disks, the system can't do that. The reason is that it would need to re-partition the 6 TB drives without losing any data - technically possible, but not easy to safely automate. When you replace the second 2 TB disk, the system might completely ignore the "extra" 2 TB on the N300s, or it might create a third RAID group of 2x2TB RAID-1 (2 TB storage).
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You can mix brands. The NAS will complain if they aren't in the same rotation speed family, which those won't be. While I had some issues mixing them with a legacy NAS and RAIDiator 4.2.x, I've not seen any issues reported here that I can say are related to mixing drive speeds.
Yes, I think you're right, as far as I know the toshiba n300 is 7200 rpm while wd red 5400
Could it be a problem that RN214 nas can not handle with two different speed drive couples on a volume?
I'm also thinking maybe I should create (if it's possible) two volumes, one for 2x6TB WD red and one for 2x4TB Toshiba N300 that would make more sense?
Leventh wrote:
Could it be a problem that RN214 nas can not handle with two different speed drive couples on a volume?
I don't think there will be any issue.
Leventh wrote:
I'm also thinking maybe I should create (if it's possible) two volumes, one for 2x6TB WD red and one for 2x4TB Toshiba N300 that would make more sense?
You can do that, but you'll need to destroy the existing volume and restore all your data from backup. Your capacity will drop (from 14 TB in one volume vs. 10 TB in both volumes combined).
Personally I'd just add the new disks, and see how it works out.
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