Adding Disks to ReadyNAS 316 Questions

Question

Hi!&nbsp; Just purchased the RN316 to replace my failing WD4000X system.&nbsp; I purchased one WD 4TB Red drive and installed that into the new RN316 and have the unit configured the way I want it and data copied over to it.&nbsp; It's working great, love the interface and options.&nbsp; The WD4000X unit lost communication with the network and both onboard NIC's died.&nbsp; It has four WD 2TB Red drives that I want to remove and add to the new RN316.&nbsp; I've been reading about reformatting them and had a few questions.&nbsp; The procedure to do this from what I've been reading is to backup data, reset the device to factory, add the drives, and it will reformat them.&nbsp; I understand I can backup the configs and I've got my&nbsp;data also backed up to an external USB 5 TB drive, but is this the only way to do it?&nbsp; What RAID will the system allow me to configure if I'm using the one 4TB drive with four additional 2 TB drives?&nbsp; I want the flexibility to be able to upgrade the 2TB drives in the future to a 4TB drives, just limited budget for that now.&nbsp; &nbsp;The 4TB gives me enough space for now (2TB of data currently), would I be better off just getting another 4TB drive and adding so I at least have the redundancy of the XRAID instead of flexRAID?&nbsp; Am I understanding how this works?&nbsp;Your advice is appreciated, thank you in advance for your time!&nbsp;&nbsp;

StephenB · Answer

You can't add anything smaller than 4 TB to your current volume XRAID.
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Your options are to:

create a new XRAID volume with all the disks in place and restore the data.&nbsp; It's simplest to do this with a factory default.
Just add a (new) 4 TB drive to your existing XRAID array
switch to flexraid and create a second RAID-5 volume with the 2 TB drives
switch to flexraid and create a new RAID-5 group on the 2 TB drives that you concatenate to your existing volume.

The last option is a pretty new flexraid feature that I haven't tried to use myself.&nbsp; I suspect it will likely complicate your expansion in the future, so you might want to pass on it.
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ThomasMiller · Answer

StephenB,Thank you for your response, this is helpful information.&nbsp; My current disk configuration is "JBOD" since I only have one 4 TB drive installed.&nbsp; Does this change anything about what you said in your previous post?&nbsp; What would happen if I install one of the 2 TB drives into the NAS?&nbsp; Would it reject it since it's smaller than the previous (and only) drive installed?&nbsp; Have you also had any experience with adding drives that have been previously used being cleaned using diskpart before insertion?&nbsp;I'm not against doing the factory default, just makes me nervous since things are working well right now.&nbsp;Thanks again for your time!&nbsp;&nbsp;

StephenB · Answer

ThomasMiller wrote:
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Thank you for your response, this is helpful information.&nbsp; My current disk configuration is "JBOD" since I only have one 4 TB drive installed.&nbsp; Does this change anything about what you said in your previous post?&nbsp; What would happen if I install one of the 2 TB drives into the NAS?&nbsp; Would it reject it since it's smaller than the previous (and only) drive installed?&nbsp;

If does change some things.
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With only one disk installed, XRAID would use a second 4 TB disk for redundancy (giving you a RAID-1 mirror).&nbsp; You'd need to add two 4 TB drives to gain space.
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If you do a factory reset with 4x2TB+4TB, you'd end up with an 8 TB redundant volume - this wastes 2 TB of space on the 4 TB drive, which would be automatically reclaimed by either upgrading a 2 TB drive to 4 TB or by adding a 4 TB drive to the final bay.&nbsp; The XRAID capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest).
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Also, the last option would require you to create a RAID-0 group and not RAID-5.&nbsp; That's a bad idea, since if any drives fail, you would lose the entire volume.
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One path that I think will work is&nbsp;

switch to flexraid (note that you are in XRAID if you see a green bar on the XRAID button on the volume tab).
insert the four 2 TB drives, format each (via the volume page) and create a RAID-5 volume.
Create temporary share names on the new volume, and migrate your data to the new volume using Frontview backup jobs.
Destroy the existing volume, and change the temporary share names to match the original.&nbsp; Remove the 4 TB drive.
switch back to XRAID
reinsert the 4 TB drive.&nbsp; You might need to format it, but it should then be added to the existing array.

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ThomasMiller · Answer

Again, thank you, this is very helpful information.&nbsp; I got all my data backed up off my old WD4000X NAS and have it on a USB external drive.&nbsp; I went ahead and pulled the trigger and did the factory reset and added all new drives allowing it to format and create the X-RAID with the 5 total drive.&nbsp; You are correct, I now have 8 TB total storage space.&nbsp; I was also able to successfully restore my configuration and I'm just starting to restore data to their respective folders.&nbsp;When it comes time to upgrade the 2 TB drives, can you just "pop" them out and install a new larger drive without telling the system you are doing it?&nbsp; I think this is one of the features of the X-RAID configuration?&nbsp; My plan is to replace all the 2 TB drives eventually and add a final 4 TB to the remaining slot.&nbsp;Thanks again for all your help today, it is appreciated!

StephenB · Answer

ThomasMiller wrote:
Again, thank you, this is very helpful information.&nbsp; I got all my data backed up off my old WD4000X NAS and have it on a USB external drive.&nbsp; I went ahead and pulled the trigger and did the factory reset and added all new drives allowing it to format and create the X-RAID with the 5 total drive.&nbsp; You are correct, I now have 8 TB total storage space.&nbsp; I was also able to successfully restore my configuration and I'm just starting to restore data to their respective folders.

Great!
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ThomasMiller wrote:
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When it comes time to upgrade the 2 TB drives, can you just "pop" them out and install a new larger drive without telling the system you are doing it?&nbsp; I think this is one of the features of the X-RAID configuration?&nbsp; My plan is to replace all the 2 TB drives eventually and add a final 4 TB to the remaining slot.
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&nbsp;Yes.&nbsp; The NAS supports hot-swapping, so you'd remove the disk and insert the new one with the NAS running.&nbsp; You do need to be careful to wait for the resync to complete before you move on to the next disk.&nbsp; You can use the NAS during the resync, though the performance will slow down.
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The first upgrade should prompt for a reboot - which is needed to trigger the volume expansion.&nbsp; After that there will be an additional resync.&nbsp; What's happening underneath is that a new RAID group is being added to the volume so you can use the 2 TB of space on the 4 TB drive that right now can't be used.&nbsp; The following upgrades won't need that reboot step.
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The volume is vulnerable to failure during resyncs, because RAID redundancy is lost until the volume is fully rebuilt.&nbsp; So I do suggest making sure your backup is up to date before you begin.&nbsp; RAID does help protect your data, but it really isn't enough - the only way to do that is to maintain at least one backup on another device.&nbsp; Personally I like at least three copies (including the original) of anything I care about.

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Adding Disks to ReadyNAS 316 Questions

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