NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Adding Disks to ReadyNAS 316 Questions
Hi! Just purchased the RN316 to replace my failing WD4000X system. 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 cop...
You can't add anything smaller than 4 TB to your current volume XRAID.
Your options are to:
- create a new XRAID volume with all the disks in place and restore the data. 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. I suspect it will likely complicate your expansion in the future, so you might want to pass on it.
StephenB,
Thank you for your response, this is helpful information. My current disk configuration is "JBOD" since I only have one 4 TB drive installed. Does this change anything about what you said in your previous post? What would happen if I install one of the 2 TB drives into the NAS? Would it reject it since it's smaller than the previous (and only) drive installed? Have you also had any experience with adding drives that have been previously used being cleaned using diskpart before insertion?
I'm not against doing the factory default, just makes me nervous since things are working well right now.
Thanks again for your time!
ThomasMiller wrote:
Thank you for your response, this is helpful information. My current disk configuration is "JBOD" since I only have one 4 TB drive installed. Does this change anything about what you said in your previous post? What would happen if I install one of the 2 TB drives into the NAS? Would it reject it since it's smaller than the previous (and only) drive installed?
If does change some things.
With only one disk installed, XRAID would use a second 4 TB disk for redundancy (giving you a RAID-1 mirror). You'd need to add two 4 TB drives to gain space.
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. The XRAID capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest).
Also, the last option would require you to create a RAID-0 group and not RAID-5. That's a bad idea, since if any drives fail, you would lose the entire volume.
One path that I think will work is
- 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. Remove the 4 TB drive.
- switch back to XRAID
- reinsert the 4 TB drive. You might need to format it, but it should then be added to the existing array.
Again, thank you, this is very helpful information. I got all my data backed up off my old WD4000X NAS and have it on a USB external drive. 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. You are correct, I now have 8 TB total storage space. I was also able to successfully restore my configuration and I'm just starting to restore data to their respective folders.
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? I think this is one of the features of the X-RAID configuration? My plan is to replace all the 2 TB drives eventually and add a final 4 TB to the remaining slot.
Thanks again for all your help today, it is appreciated!
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
