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Expanding RN102 a second time
I have a RN102 I've been using for about 3 years with a single 2TB drive. Firmware is 6.8.0. X-RAID is on but because there is only one drive in there, at the moment it is JBOD. I want to expand to 4TB so I bought a new 4TB drive I am about to add to the second bay. I assume if I do this while the NAS is powered on then it will automatically switch from JBOD to RAID1 and sync the existing 2TB drive to the new 4TB, leaving me with a total of 4TB and, for the moment, RAID1 redundancy on that original 2TB of data. Some questions:
- if I start using more than 2TB then I will no longer have full redundancy so I am not sure what the point is of going to RAID1 really other than ease of "upgrading" to 4TB through automatically syncing. Seems like once I am using more than 2TB I am kind of wasting that orignal 2TB drive now. Is this an accurate perspective?
- after the sync is finished, can I remove the original 2TB drive and just use my NAS with the single 4TB drive, especially since I would not have RAID1 redundancy on all the data beyond 2TB?
- after the sync is finished, can I remove the original 2TB drive and replace it with a 6TB drive, thereby expanding the system from 4TB to 6TB?
Thanks for any help you can provide on what I suspect are newbie questions.
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You are only partly correctl. Yes, if you add a 4TB to the existing 2TB with XRAID on, it will switch to RAID1 and sync 2TB of the new drive as redundancy for the old one. No, you will not get 4TB. You will have a 2TB redundant array and 2TB of unusable space on the 4TB drive until such time as you swap the 2TB with another 4TB. AFAIK, the only way around this by switching off XRAID and then add the 4TB as another JBOD or RAID0, for 6TB but still no redundancy.
Ah, OK. This is very helpful and makes much more sense now. Thanks. So for now it looks like I'll need to turn on XRAID and just make the new 4TB drive JBOD. Couple more questions:
- Is there an automatic copy/mirror function to replicate the existing 2TB on to this new 4TB so I can make it my main NAS drive and then remove the old 2TB?
- Can I turn XRAID back on again when I finally get another 4TB drive so I can then use RAID1 at that time?
Thanks again.
If you just put the 4TB in and let it sync, everything on the 2TB will be copied to it. You can then remove the 2TB, but it will complain that the volume is no longer redundant. You will still have no access to the extra 2TB, AFAIK. I know of no other way to accomplish this using the NAS itself. I have no idea what the NAS might do if you cloned the 2TB to a 4TB using another type of machine and inserted it.
If you make the 4TB a second JBOD and later remove the first, you are asking for trouble. If you have any home folders or apps, I can tell you it's just not going to work right. You will end up without a "data" volume, which can also cause issues. If you really do want to do it, and have a backup in case everything goes wrong, you can use the "Export" function in the volume settings for the 4TB, power down, and then power up with the 4TB only. That should work, but you are in unchartered waters and it could break at any OS update.
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