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1611kjb's avatar
1611kjb
Aspirant
Jun 13, 2016
Solved

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...
  • StephenB's avatar
    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).

     

     

     

     

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