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Andy101's avatar
Andy101
Aspirant
Jan 22, 2024
Solved

Up grading hard disk in a ReadyNAS 104

Hi all. I have a ReadyNAS 104 which at the moments has 4X 1TB disks in it.

I would like to upgrade these to larger sized disks.

2 question:

  • What's the max size disk I can use?
  • How best to do this. Do I put them in one at a time, till the data status changes from Degraded to healthy, then put the next one in?

Thanks.


  • Andy101 wrote:

     

    • What's the max size disk I can use?

     


    There is no known limit, so you could go up to 24 TB.  But the sync time goes up as the disk size increases, so I wouldn't go nearly that far on the RN104 (which after all was an entry level NAS).  But you could go with 10 TB if you wanted to.  Cost per TB tends to flatten out at 10+ TB, so drives in that size range are a bit more economical.

     

    I recommend WD Red Plus or Seagate Ironwolf for your NAS.  Avoid desktop drives, as many are now SMR - which doesn't work well with ReadyNAS. Similarly avoid WD Red (w/o the plus) as they also are SMR.

     


    Andy101 wrote:
    • How best to do this. Do I put them in one at a time, till the data status changes from Degraded to healthy, then put the next one in?

     


    Hot-swap one with the NAS running, and wait for the resync to complete (after the degraded status goes away).  Then you can do the next.

     

    I always test my disks first in a PC - running the long non-destructive diagnostic first, and then the erase disk when that completes.  I have had some disks pass one of these tests, but fail the other.

     

    Note with X-RAID, you don't need to replace all four disks.  Two are enough to get it to expand. The capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest".

     

    If you went with 2x10TB+2x1TB you'd end up with 12 TB of space (reported as 10.9 TiB by the NAS).  Upgrading a third drive later on would increase the space to 21 TB, upgrading the fouth would increase it to 30 TB. 

2 Replies

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  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User

    Andy101 wrote:

     

    • What's the max size disk I can use?

     


    There is no known limit, so you could go up to 24 TB.  But the sync time goes up as the disk size increases, so I wouldn't go nearly that far on the RN104 (which after all was an entry level NAS).  But you could go with 10 TB if you wanted to.  Cost per TB tends to flatten out at 10+ TB, so drives in that size range are a bit more economical.

     

    I recommend WD Red Plus or Seagate Ironwolf for your NAS.  Avoid desktop drives, as many are now SMR - which doesn't work well with ReadyNAS. Similarly avoid WD Red (w/o the plus) as they also are SMR.

     


    Andy101 wrote:
    • How best to do this. Do I put them in one at a time, till the data status changes from Degraded to healthy, then put the next one in?

     


    Hot-swap one with the NAS running, and wait for the resync to complete (after the degraded status goes away).  Then you can do the next.

     

    I always test my disks first in a PC - running the long non-destructive diagnostic first, and then the erase disk when that completes.  I have had some disks pass one of these tests, but fail the other.

     

    Note with X-RAID, you don't need to replace all four disks.  Two are enough to get it to expand. The capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest".

     

    If you went with 2x10TB+2x1TB you'd end up with 12 TB of space (reported as 10.9 TiB by the NAS).  Upgrading a third drive later on would increase the space to 21 TB, upgrading the fouth would increase it to 30 TB. 

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