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peteophoven's avatar
peteophoven
Aspirant
Jul 10, 2017
Solved

Expanding RAID - failing

Dear Community.

We have begun expanding the volume from 1.8 TB with three 1TB drives running in RAID X2.

We purchased 3 x 4TB drives.  

The first 2 added just fine.  Taking us to 6.4TB.  

I am trying to expand the volume for the third time and it keeps failing with no information.  Only, Error expanding volume.

 

Does anyone have any suggestions?  

I know there is a hard limit at 1.8TB + 8TB on older models.  But we aren't hitting that threshold.  

If we add the last 4TB drive - 3277 GB plus the redundancy with the raid, we will be adding about 2.668 TB taking us to exactly 9TB.

 

Does anyone have any leads or where I should look or try?  

I can reinstall the firmware, but cannot take it to factory - this is the production server.  

Thanks for your help and feedback.

Pete

  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Jul 11, 2017

    peteophoven wrote:

    We started the volume with 3 X 1 TB drives.

     


     

    OK.  That's the same volume size as a single 2 TB drive (except you have redundancy).

     

    Because your starting point was 1.8 TiB, your volume expansion ceiling is 9.8 TiB.

     

    3x1TB + 3x4TB would give you a volume size of 11 TB (or 10 TiB),

     

    The last drive expansion still fails because it would take you over your expansion ceiling (just barely, but still over).

     

    Reformatting the drive won't overcome that.  As I said above, you either need to do off-line expansion with ssh, or do a factory reset and restore the data from backup.

     

    If you do a factory reset, you can switch to OS-6.  Though not supported by Netgear, it doesn't have any known expansion limits.

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  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User

    What firmware are you running?  I ask because of the "OS 6 on Legacy" tag on your post.  That implies OS-6, but your post suggests something else.

     

    Your 9 TB expectation isn't right - In your case you should end up at 8 TB total volume size (7.3 TiB).

     

     

    That shouldn't be hitting any expansion limits with OS 4.2.

     

    BTW, 2x4TB+2TB should have given you ~5.4 TiB  Are you seeing 6.4 TiB now?

     

    • peteophoven's avatar
      peteophoven
      Aspirant

      Thank you.

      Yes to clarify it is a ReadyNAS Pro 6.

      Firmware 4.2.28

       

      Here is how the drives are currently setup:

       

      RAID Level X-RAID2, 6 disks  Showing 6466GB

      Status:  Redundant

      Ch1:  927GB

      Ch2:  927GB

      Ch3:  927GB

      Ch4:  3721GB

      Ch5:  3721GB

      Ch6:  Indicates 3721GB but it keeps failing.

       

      I'm thinking of pulling the drive.  Restarting the unit and reinserting it?

      • StephenB's avatar
        StephenB
        Guru - Experienced User

        I thought you were replacing the 2 TB drives, not adding to them.

         

        3x2TB + 3x4TB would give you a 14 TB volume size altogether. ("sum the drives and subtract the largest").

         

        3x2TB + 2x4TB would give you a 10 TB volume size (9 TiB)

         

         

        If you happened to start with a single  2 TB drive installed when you first set up the system, then the 8 TiB growth limit would be reached between 10 and 11 TB. I'm thinking that's what's happened.

         

        If so, reinserting the disk won't help.  You'd need to offload data, do a factory reset, and then restore.  It is possible to do an off-line expansion with ssh, but you should still do a backup first if you want to attempt that.

         

         

         

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