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Expanding Disk Space on raid 10
firmware 6.5.0
readynas 2120
I’m use 4---2TB drives with raid 10, total storage 4TB. I want to add more storage. I’ll either switch to raid 5 or get larger drives and stay with raid 10. I only have 1 volume on the nas. I was hoping to vertically expand the volume, but I don’t think you can do a vertical expansion with raid 10 in the readynas line……maybe you can in the readydata?
My 1st step would be getting all the data off the current drives. There is roughly about 1TB snapshots on the current drives, I want to keep those snapshots. Will the snapshots come with the data if a I do a full backup of the nas?
Also, once I have a copy of the data, I should be able to delete the current volume and load new disk, correct? I won’t need to start over with all my nas settings will I?
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FG wrote:
firmware 6.5.0
readynas 2120
I’m use 4---2TB drives with raid 10, total storage 4TB. I want to add more storage. I’ll either switch to raid 5 or get larger drives and stay with raid 10. I only have 1 volume on the nas. I was hoping to vertically expand the volume, but I don’t think you can do a vertical expansion with raid 10 in the readynas line……maybe you can in the readydata?
No - you can't expand RAID-10.
FG wrote:
My 1st step would be getting all the data off the current drives. There is roughly about 1TB snapshots on the current drives, I want to keep those snapshots. Will the snapshots come with the data if a I do a full backup of the nas?
They will not be kept. You could format a USB drive as BTRFS, and then you could preserve the snapshots by copying the volume with ssh. (btfrs send | btrfs receive)
FG wrote:
Also, once I have a copy of the data, I should be able to delete the current volume and load new disk, correct? I won’t need to start over with all my nas settings will I
I'd save the NAS configuration (system->settings) anyway.
But you should be able to destroy the data volume, and replace the disks one by one. Uninstall any apps first. The NAS will need to resync the OS partition as you do this. When you are done, recreate the RAID-10 volume and reinstall any apps.
Is formating a USB for BTRFS my best option for perserving the snapshots?
What about this hair-brain idea....
Since I have raid 10 with 4 disks, then 2 of the disk hold all the information (either 1&2 or 3&4). Could I pull drives 1 and 2 out, set up a new volume as raid 5 for drive 1 and 2. Then copy the 2 remaining drives from the raid 10-----drive 3 and 4 to drive 1 and 2. Next delete the raid 10 volume and then expand the raid 5 volume to a 4 disk raid?
Personally I'd just let the snapshots go. Trying to keep them makes the job a lot bigger.
FG wrote:
Is formating a USB for BTRFS my best option for perserving the snapshots?
I think so.
FG wrote:
Since I have raid 10 with 4 disks, then 2 of the disk hold all the information (either 1&2 or 3&4). Could I pull drives 1 and 2 out, set up a new volume as raid 5 for drive 1 and 2. Then copy the 2 remaining drives from the raid 10-----drive 3 and 4 to drive 1 and 2. Next delete the raid 10 volume and then expand the raid 5 volume to a 4 disk raid?
The GUI doesn't tell you how the disks are paired - I'm not sure if you'd need disk 1+2 or disk 1+3.
If one of your new disks has enough space for all the data, you could possibly remove disk-4, install a new drive there and select jbod. Copy the subvolumes over via ssh, destroy the raid-10 volume and insert remaining new disks as RAID-5. Copy the subvolumes back (again using ssh), destroy the temporary volume and remove the disk. Change back to xraid, and then re-add that disk.
I think using a USB 3.0 enclosure or SATA adapter is better though. Then you can remove all the existing disks at once, giving you an intact RAID-10 volume that you can use as a fallback if something goes wrong.
You also can't setup a RAID5 on 2 HDDs.
Using Flex-RAID or X-RAID, if you use 2 HDDs, you can setup a RAID1 (X-RAID chooses for you).
Also, horizontal expansion in Flex-RAID doesn't happen at all like in X-RAID. Here, from 2 HDDs to 4 HDDs.
If you want to expand to RAID5, you must turn X-RAID back on. Which is perfectly fine btw, as you would do this only at the moment where you have only one volume left (it wouldn't work otherwise)
If you expand your volume in Flex-RAID, it will create a second RAID1 and concatenate the two arrays in the BTRFS volume. Data will be balanced between both RAID arrays, but it's not a true RAID10 (chunks are "single" not "RAID0").If you wanted more capacity by upgrading two disks, how would you know which two to upgrade? (I'm not using RAID-10 myself).
Stephen
I not sure what you're asking. I have a 4 disk raid 10. My goal is to expand the entire raid/volume.
Well a vertically expansion would be the easiest, but I thought it can't be done with raid 10.
Well a vertically expansion would be the easiest, but I thought it can't be done with raid 10.
Retired_Member is saying it does work when he replaces all disks, but AFAIK the GUI doesn't tell you the disk pairs.
By nature, all the HDDs in a RAID10 must be the size. Or at least, the system will use the biggest common size (which is set by the smallest HDD).
There is a trick with mdadm to find which HDDs belong to which vdev/pair (cf Google), but it's not the easiest, and replacing several HDDs at a time is looking for trouble. So unless you have a 12 HDDs RAID10, I advise you to upgrade the HDDs one by one. Also because of the nature of RAID10, resync times aren't that long.I will try reinstall the disks 1 at the time.
Still not sure if I should stick with raid 10 or switch to raid 5 or 6.
- It depends what you're trying to do, what data you're gonna store, etc.
(With 4 HDDs)
For pure redundancy, use RAID6 (or even RAID1, but not possible from GUI).
For capacity with some redundancy, use RAID5.
For performance with some redundancy, use RAID10.
For pure capacity, use JBOD.
For pure performance, use RAID0.
Also, if you're asking yourself to change or not, I presume you're in a situation where you can change. So I'd advise to actually try the three different options, benchmark performance, take into account the redundancy, and select the one you want.
If you don't have any specific requirements, on 4 HDDs, RAID5 is often the "one size fits all".This NAS or our backup storage.
I'm think raid 5 is the way to go.....capacity+redundancy
Since all the backups are done at night, I really don't care how long it takes to write data to the NAS, but when it comes time to RECOVER or READ the data off the NAS will one of the RAIDS 5, 6 or 10 provide and notable difference in recovery time?
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