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Forum Discussion
dbasskin
Sep 22, 2017Aspirant
RN214
Simple question: can I set up the RN214 with a single drive? Or do they have to be installed in pairs? Or must all four bays be filled? Must all the disks be the same capacity?
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- StephenBGuru - Experienced User
dbasskin wrote:
Simple question: can I set up the RN214 with a single drive? Or do they have to be installed in pairs? Or must all four bays be filled?You can start with a single drive. An enterprise or NAS-purposed (WDC red, Seagate Ironwolf) is best - I recommend avoiding desktop drives even if they are on the hardware compatibility list.
dbasskin wrote:
Must all the disks be the same capacity?No. But if you are adding drives to the array, each new drive must be at least as large as the largest drive already installed. For instance, you can add a 4 TB drive to a 2x2TB array, but not a 1 TB drive.
The capacity rule for the volume size (with XRAID) is "sum the disks and subtract the largest". So if you add a larger drive to the NAS, you will waste some space until you add another drive of the same larger size (or upgrade a smaller drive).
One common area of confusion - Disk manufacturers use TB (1000*1000*1000*1000 bytes) units, but the NAS (like Windows) reports space in TiB (1024*1024*1024*1024 bytes). Google will convert the units for you (try entering "3 TB in TiB").
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