Forum Discussion

Apprentice

Sep 08, 2015

Solved

New ReadyNAS 316 single to dual redundancy and future-proofing

Hi Everyone,

QUESTION: on a 316 (with OS 6) and with only 3 or 4 drives, can I go from single redundancy to dual redundancy without having to re-format my drives? That is, if I add a 5th drive, or 6th drive, will it be easy for me to mark the volume as dual-redundant?

Explanation: I just bought a new diskless 316 and I'm trying to plan for the future as my wife's photography business continues to gobble up data. We currently have a need for about 7-8TB of storage and I expect our yearly data needs to grow by 1.5TB (or more) annually over the next few years. I will be using snapshots (yay! looking forward to this as I'm currently using rsync and hardlinks on a maxed-out NV+).

I have read the software manuals and the website and the community forums but I'm still not 100% sure that my plan is going to work.

I want to start with 3x6TB WD RED drives in XRAID mode. As we near 12 TB, I want to add additional 6TB drives as needed. However, at the point when we need 5 drives, I would like to be able to enable dual redundancy. I'm not comfortable having 5 or 6 drives in a single volume with only single redundancy.

I plan to only ever have a single volume. I'm comfortable having to switch to FlexRAID and back if needed. If this is NOT easy, then I will buy 4 drives now and set up dual redundancy from the beginning.

Thanks!

Damon

Tips from other users

mdgm-ntgr
Sep 08, 2015
It would be a matter of days. Of course you should make sure your backup is up to date before you add a disk to the NAS. No important data should be stored on just the one device regardless of the RAID level used. The sync when you add a disk puts heavy stress on all disks. If disks are failing this sync can finish them off.

It can be done while the NAS is on but performance will be reduced during this time. If you do use the NAS during the resync that's fine, but the sync will take longer than it would otherwise.

5 Replies

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Sep 08, 2015
It is best to setup dual-redundancy from the beginning (switch to Flex-RAID, destroy default volume, create new RAID-6 volume, re-enable X-RAID) as the conversion to dual-redundancy does take quite some time.

With an existing volume you would need to disable X-RAID and get the next disk added to add parity and once the disk has been added re-enable X-RAID.

Note with dual-redundancy if you had 6x6TB disks and wanted to expand further you would need 4 disks with higher capacity.

It is advisable to schedule a balance to run every few weeks and volume usage should be kept to about 80%.
- metapaso
  Apprentice
  Sep 08, 2015
  Thank you so much for the rapid reply.
  
  Can you (roughly) define what you mean by "quite some time" in the context I described (perhaps 4 or 5 x 6TB drives, planning on using the snapshot manager to make frequent snapshots). Is this something measured in hours, days, weeks, months or (yikes!) years?
  
  Also, if I do disable X-raid, add the parity disk, re-enable xraid, is this something that can be done live? We are only 2 or 3 light users, so there won't be much overall load to the system other than the re-factoring.
  
  Thanks again,
  Damon
  - mdgm-ntgr
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    Sep 08, 2015
    It would be a matter of days. Of course you should make sure your backup is up to date before you add a disk to the NAS. No important data should be stored on just the one device regardless of the RAID level used. The sync when you add a disk puts heavy stress on all disks. If disks are failing this sync can finish them off.
    
    It can be done while the NAS is on but performance will be reduced during this time. If you do use the NAS during the resync that's fine, but the sync will take longer than it would otherwise.
metapaso
Apprentice
Sep 08, 2015
Also, just realized I meant to post this thread in the "new to readynas" forum...sorry. Can/Should it be moved?
metapaso
Apprentice
Sep 10, 2015
Thank you again for all the tips.I can live with a few days or even weeks for the sync to take place. Yes we use several layers of backup including CrashPlan and also drives stored with family for offsite. The 316 is intended as a "local" backup because restoring 8TB from Crashplan cloud may take months and our multiple off site drives are very fragmented.

Thanks again!