Adding New HDDs to RN10400

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DavidFreeman198 wrote:

Hi, I have has the Readynas RN10400 for a couple of years now using only 1 drive.  I now need to add more storage but I am unsure how to do this.

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There are two ways. 

(1) Purchase 2 more disks that are the same size (or larger) than the ones you have installed.  You hot-insert the first (no formatting), and wait for the volume to be rebuilt.  You will see no increase in volume size, but the array will become RAID-1 (redundant).  Then add the second disk the same way.  This will increase the volume size.  When it is over, you will have protection from a single disk drive failure, and more space.  The rule for capacity is to sum the disks and subtract the smallest.  So if you have 3 TB now, and buy two more 4 TB drives you will end up with a 7 TB volume.

(2) Purchase one disk (any size). Turn off XRAID on the volume page.  If the green stripe isn't shown, then XRAID is off.  Insert the new drive (no formatting), and select it.  Add it as a new volume - don't extend the old one, or make it redundant.  Extending/expanding a non-redundant volume is possible, but for most people is a bad choice.  If either disk fails, you will lose all your data.  With two volumes, if a disk fails you lose what's on it, but the data on the other disk remains intact.

The first way is the best, though it does mean you need to get two disks.