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Forum Discussion
RN214, query on a 2nd vertical expansion
Hello Forum Simply query, just checking. Can I carry out a “vertical expansion” more than once? I have a RN214 ( 6.10.3, X-RAID) which already went from 4x 4TB to 4x8TB, and I am just about t...
GRRRRR
I have been refreshing the page every 30 mins since I posted it, but I never saw any reply until few minutes ago (the following day) when I refreshed “the entire tree”. Last night (say 20h ago), I started copying back the files and it has done ~4tb by now. I suppose I could “delete the volume” and reboot. The disks are now formatted and it shouldn’t go into “safe mode” which is what happened yesterday, and meant restarting EVERYTHING passwords, emails, fixed network node etc..
Then I could start again keeping the X-RAID, at moment it doesn’t allow me to switch “Cannot select X-RAID on RAID 0 or RAID 10” because I don’t have the redundant disk
Sandshark, the Soft Manual says that X-RAID doesn’t support RAID 0, but infact when I started, X-RAID was there (as default), even after I selected RAID 0 (albeit it wasn’t highlighted in green), and it was me who switched it o Flexi-RAID. So…. I should have left it on and maybe it would have gone green when I added the 3 rd disk.
StephenB, I will follow advice and go 6.10.9… now ( I stopped the data copying already)
If you still have all the drives from the original volume and you want things to be set up the same as they were, you could put those drives back in and save the configuration, then restore it on your new volume. The volume name must be the same to do that. If you had apps installed, you should re-install them before restoring, so if you had apps you don't plan to re-install, don't backup "everything", just do the users & groups and share access. If you have ReadyCloud users you are removing, then this is probably not a good idea.
I believe you are correct that it would have gone green when you added the third drive. At the Linux level, a RAID0 created by the OS is actually a RAID that's missing a member (so no redundancy), but it's flagged that the OS won't complain abo0ut that missing element. A single drive RAID1 is a RAID1 with a missing member and a 2-drive or more is a RAID-5 missing one, So it's not showing green because there is no redundancy (I missed that in my experiments).
Hi SandShark & StephenB,
I took up both tips, DESTROYed the Volume, updated to 6.10.9 ( I don’t really use apps but who knows, tomorrow I may wish to do so ), recreated the Volume but this time I left it on X-RAID (“not green”). Happily copying the data, 5.38TB done, which is ~half of the first disk, so ~3days more, then I should be able to hot-add the 3 disk, then the 1st resinch, on a 36TB volume, after which the X-RAID should turn green. After that the same again with the 4th disk, 2nd resinch of a 48TB volume, so it may take a little longer. I am not sure if I could hot-add both the 3rd and 4th disk together, but OS6 may still do two resinches anyway. I am not in a rush, so why risk to confuse things..?
I am not sure if I could hot-add both the 3rd and 4th disk together
The NAS can't do two syncs in parallel.
Do one hot-add at a time. That makes it easier to troubleshoot if something were to go wrong.
Bummer. It didn't work out as planned.
Last night the data copying finished, so I removed both 12tb from the PC and I hot inserted one of them in Slot 3. I had to DESTROY the data, then FORMAT the disk, which is now “availlable to the NAS to be used”. But when I click on disk#3 (which is black and becomes a darker black) and the 4 buttons under the Pie diagram appear, if I click on “Expand”, nothing happens. Under the X-RAID button I have “New Volume, Format, and Global Spare”, but could I Create a new Volume and merge it with the existing one? I doubt that, I cannot find anything in the SM which suggest that. So… I am stuck.
SandShark said
"Start with XRAID. You can still choose RAID0 as the initial volume, then it will automatically do exactly what you are planning for the expansion. The OS sometimes disallows your ability to switch from FlexRAID to XRAID. Nothing you plan should trigger that, AFAIK, but there is no need to take the chance."
Well, I think that this is exactly what happened. I DID delete the Volume which I created in FlexiRAID and recreated the volume leaving the X-RAID switch as it appeared (by default, and NOT green), and then restarted copying the data, but it is still a RAID0, the NAS thinks that it is on FlexiRAID because when I click on the X-RAID button, I get the message “You are attempting to switch from Flexi-RAID to X-RAID. This is not possible with either RAID0 or RAID10”. Maybe the mistake was that I should have created a “RAID5 missing one”, but I don’t think that I could have created a RAID5 with just 2 disks..
Note that I still have the Full Array of 8tb disks, so I could theoretically refit them, the NAS should see the array and then vertically expand, which was the other option which I originally have. Three of the 8tb disks were fitted in October ’21 and run for 20,000 h, the 4th 14,000 h.
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