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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 ...
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).
Dear StephenB
Actually I did not think what will happen after creating two volumes and what drive space can I have, so you're probably right.
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?
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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