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Forum Discussion
robinwatts
Jul 02, 2017Aspirant
Disc failure during expansion
Hi all. I have been running a ReadyNAS with 3 drives in for a while, (2+2+4 Gig respectively). I ended up with 3.6TB of capacity, and hit 80%+ full the other day. Accordingly, I put an 8Gig dr...
- Jul 06, 2017
robinwatts wrote:
If I had an array with 4+8+8, could I safely add another 4TB drive later to get it to the maximum 16?
The usual guidance is that you can only add 8 TB (or bigger). Taking the expansion limits into account, that means upgrading the 4 TB to 8 TB.
Some experiments posted here show that OS-6 NAS would let you add a 4 TB (since there is a 4 TB already in the array). However, I don't know if OS 5 will allow that (though it is technically possible).
Under the covers, a 4+8+8 setup has two RAID groups - a 3x4TB RAID-5 group that covers all drives, and a 2x4 RAID-1 group that covers the two larger drives. These are assembled into one volume.
Adding a 2 TB drive requires that the 3x4TB group be split into two 3x2TB groups (followed by adding the new drive to one of those groups). XRAID won't split an existing group that way (and I don't think it can be done easily w/o data loss).
robinwatts
Jul 05, 2017Aspirant
> The last step in option (2) won't work, since you can't add a 2 TB disk to an array
> with larger drives. If you leave that step out, you could upgrade the 4 TB to 8 TB
> when the time comes.
Ah, so what is the rule here?
If I had an array with 4+8+8, could I safely add another 4TB drive later to get it to the maximum 16?
Thanks.
StephenB
Jul 06, 2017Guru - Experienced User
robinwatts wrote:
If I had an array with 4+8+8, could I safely add another 4TB drive later to get it to the maximum 16?
The usual guidance is that you can only add 8 TB (or bigger). Taking the expansion limits into account, that means upgrading the 4 TB to 8 TB.
Some experiments posted here show that OS-6 NAS would let you add a 4 TB (since there is a 4 TB already in the array). However, I don't know if OS 5 will allow that (though it is technically possible).
Under the covers, a 4+8+8 setup has two RAID groups - a 3x4TB RAID-5 group that covers all drives, and a 2x4 RAID-1 group that covers the two larger drives. These are assembled into one volume.
Adding a 2 TB drive requires that the 3x4TB group be split into two 3x2TB groups (followed by adding the new drive to one of those groups). XRAID won't split an existing group that way (and I don't think it can be done easily w/o data loss).
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