Converting JBOD TO XRAID

You didn't understand that correctly.

Let me try to explain:

X-RAID is just something that creates RAID arrays automatically. Depending on the number of drives you have in the chassis, X-RAID will choose what level of RAID to choose for the creation of the volume.

-> In your case, if you have 3 or 4 disks, it will create a RAID5 array.

RAID5 is good for performance and for redundancy, but the parity will cost the capacity of one disk - one member of the RAID array).

-> In your case, if you have 3 disks of 2TB, X-RAID will create a RAID5 array on 3 disks, which will give you a 4TB volume (unformatted capacity). If you have 4 disks of 2TB, then it will create a 6TB volume (unformatted capacity) on a 4 disks RAID5 array.

If there are disks of different capacities, to explain it simply, X-RAID will try to create sub RAID arrays on unused parts of disks, but will need at least 2 disks with bigger capacity than the others.

-> In your case, you have all the same capacity, so don't worry about it.

Now, AT NO TIME, you need to "remove" a disk. The explanations you found are only for the calculation of the capacity. YOU DO NOT NEED TO ACTUALLY REMOVE A DISK FROM THE NAS, just to "remove" the capacity of the disk to calculate the volume capacity.

Though, I don't like very much the way this says it, there is a "rule" that's often quoted here: "To calculate the capacity of your volume, you need to add up the capacity of all the disks and remove the capacity of the biggest disk".

Or: VolumeCapacity = SumOfAll (DiskCapacity) - Biggest (DiskCapacity)

If you used two HDDs in a single JBOD:

1. Backup all data, check backup integrity, etc.

2. Destroy the volume.

3. Insert all the other HDDs.

4. Turn on X-RAID.

5. X-RAID will create a single volume on all your HDDs (based on RAID5 array).

If you used two HDDs in two separate JBOBs:

1. Backup all data, check backup integrity, etc.

2. Destroy the second volume. You don't need to destroy the first one, instead, we'll use it as base.

3. Insert all the other HDDs.

4. Turn on X-RAID.

5. X-RAID will convert your JBOD volume to a single volume on all your HDDs (based on RAID5 array).