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Forum Discussion
1611kjb
Jun 13, 2016Aspirant
Replacing a drive that is about to go bad.
So, right now I have 4 drives in a flexraid configuration. Two 4TB drives and two 3TB drives. The system is telling me drive 4 is having too many uncorrectable errors and it's about to go bad. So I n...
- Jun 13, 2016
Your configuration sounds more like XRAID to me (which is actually you want, given your goals). XRAID with your disk sizes would give you a 10 TB volume, which the NAS would report as ~9.09 TiB. FlexRaid would treat all your drives as if they were 3 TB models, giving you a 9 TB volume (or ~8.2 TiB).
Look at the volume screen, and see if there is a green stripe across the XRAID control. If so, you are running XRAID. My replies below assume XRAID.
The cheapest fix is to simply replace the failing 3 TB drive with a new one. If you replace it with a 4 TB model, you spend perhaps $40-$50 more, and expand the array by 1 TB. That's probably what I'd do. You could go with an even larger drive size, but you can't take advantage of that unless you get two of them.
Upgrading the second 3 TB drives to 4 TB would you one more TB of space. That might get you piece of mind, but normally replacing a working 3 TB drive with a 4 TB model isn't that cost effective ($150 US spent, for 1 TB more storage).
6 TB drives are compatible with the RN100 NAS (my RN102 has a WD60EFRX and an WD80EFZX), but sync times will be slow.
Migrating all of the 6 TB drives to your RN104 would gain you 8 TB of space on the RN104, and you'd gain another 6 TB on the other NAS. Cost per TB gained would be about $100 per TB. Not that economical- but if you need to expand the storage on the other NAS, it makes sense to re-use the 6 TB drives in the RN104.
However, upgrading to a 6-bay RN316 would cost about $600 (using today's amazon pricing), and that might also be worth considering. You could get a similar space gain overall, for slightly less money. Getting 2 8TB drives + the RN316 prices out at $1300. Using one to replace the failing 3 TB drive, and the other in an empty slot would give you a 19 TB volume with one empty slot. Debiting the purchase price by $100 to cover the 3 TB replacement you need anyway gives you a cost per TB gained of $132 - higher than your 4x8 TB upgrade. But you end up with a much faster NAS, plus an empty slot (making future uprades more cost effective).
StephenB
Jun 13, 2016Guru - Experienced User
Your configuration sounds more like XRAID to me (which is actually you want, given your goals). XRAID with your disk sizes would give you a 10 TB volume, which the NAS would report as ~9.09 TiB. FlexRaid would treat all your drives as if they were 3 TB models, giving you a 9 TB volume (or ~8.2 TiB).
Look at the volume screen, and see if there is a green stripe across the XRAID control. If so, you are running XRAID. My replies below assume XRAID.
The cheapest fix is to simply replace the failing 3 TB drive with a new one. If you replace it with a 4 TB model, you spend perhaps $40-$50 more, and expand the array by 1 TB. That's probably what I'd do. You could go with an even larger drive size, but you can't take advantage of that unless you get two of them.
Upgrading the second 3 TB drives to 4 TB would you one more TB of space. That might get you piece of mind, but normally replacing a working 3 TB drive with a 4 TB model isn't that cost effective ($150 US spent, for 1 TB more storage).
6 TB drives are compatible with the RN100 NAS (my RN102 has a WD60EFRX and an WD80EFZX), but sync times will be slow.
Migrating all of the 6 TB drives to your RN104 would gain you 8 TB of space on the RN104, and you'd gain another 6 TB on the other NAS. Cost per TB gained would be about $100 per TB. Not that economical- but if you need to expand the storage on the other NAS, it makes sense to re-use the 6 TB drives in the RN104.
However, upgrading to a 6-bay RN316 would cost about $600 (using today's amazon pricing), and that might also be worth considering. You could get a similar space gain overall, for slightly less money. Getting 2 8TB drives + the RN316 prices out at $1300. Using one to replace the failing 3 TB drive, and the other in an empty slot would give you a 19 TB volume with one empty slot. Debiting the purchase price by $100 to cover the 3 TB replacement you need anyway gives you a cost per TB gained of $132 - higher than your 4x8 TB upgrade. But you end up with a much faster NAS, plus an empty slot (making future uprades more cost effective).
- 1611kjbJun 13, 2016Aspirant
Well, that's thinking out of the box and is a good idea. The reason I was moving the 6 TB here and exoanding that NAS to 8 TB drives was because the other NAS is considerably faster. I looked at the specs on the RN316 and can get approximately equivalent performance out of it and, as you say, for the same price in drives I can get more space, upgrade and have plaenty of room for expansion without touching my other drive. I hadn't even considered upgrading the NAS because I'm running three now and this, in essence would cause me to pitch one of the other ones. The smallest and slowest is a Synology 212j and I doubt I can resell it for much on eBay, so it will just become a scrap drive (at least until I have the leasure of throwing a couple of old drives in it).
I appreciate the response, I think it will solve this and a few future expansion problems as well as save me time in resyncing drive as I moved data. ---Mike
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