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I have a few questions regarding a RN628X storage upgrade
Hello. My NAS is currently running RAID 5 (4x8TB) and I would like to swap all of the drives with 14tb ones without data loss. Would I simply replace one drive at a time, waiting for everything to fully transfer, and then moving onto the next disk?
Another question. I am also considering swapping back to X-RAID for easier expansion down the line. Are there any performance benefits from switching over from RAID 5? Will I lose all data in doing so? The prompt on the admin page doesn't tell me whether everything will be wiped or not if I make the switch.
usncole wrote:
StephenB I am wanting to expand the 8x4TB drives to 8x14TB.
Ok. Not sure if the system will let you switch to X-RAID, as it would normally use RAID-6 for 8 drives and not RAID-5.
Note that doing this one drive at a time will take quite a while, and will require a lot of disk I/O. Backing up the data, installing all the new disks at once, doing a fresh factory install, reconfiguring the NAS, and restoring the data from backup would be quite a bit quicker.
Building the array once (during the fresh install) requires 14*8 TB of disk I/O = 112 TB all together. Backup + restore adds at most 56 TB more (and that assumes your volume is completely full). So a max of 168 TB of disk I/O
One at a time with FlexRAID is about twice that - 336 TB of total disk I/O (not counting a backup for safety) That is because it resyncs the 8x4TB partitions every time you upgrade a disk, and then syncs the 8x10 TB partitions once after the final disk.
One at a time with X-RAID is even worse - 606 TB of total disk I/O (not again counting the backup for safety). That is because it supports unequal disk sizes, so it will be resyncing the 10 TB partitions multiple times.
Either way, one at a time puts a substantial load on the disks. If any of them fail during the process, you would lose all the data and would need to use data recovery. So I'd definitely recommend making the backup first.
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usncole wrote:
Another question. I am also considering swapping back to X-RAID for easier expansion down the line. Are there any performance benefits from switching over from RAID 5?
X-RAID with 4x8 TB drives would be running RAID-5. X-RAID is a management layer that uses standard RAID modes underneath.
One difference is that X-RAID would switch to dual-redundancy (RAID-6) when you add the 7th drive, so there would be no storage increase for that drive.
However, if you expanded the volume after you switched to FlexRAID, then the system might not let you switch back.
usncole wrote:
Will I lose all data in doing so? The prompt on the admin page doesn't tell me whether everything will be wiped or not if I make the switch.
No, there is no data loss in making that switch.
Though there can be data loss if something goes wrong when you expand the volume or replaced a failing disk. So Netgear does recommend making a backup before you replace or upgrade disks.
usncole wrote:
My NAS is currently running RAID 5 (4x8TB) and I would like to swap all of the drives with 14tb ones without data loss.
You have 4 empty slots, and it would be cheaper to use them along with your existing drives. With X-RAID, adding two 14 TB drives to your existing array would give you 46 TB - 4 TB more storage than 4x14 TB - and would be half the cost. This assumes your 8 TB drives are all healthy of course.
Either way, there can be data loss if something goes wrong when you expand the volume or replace a failing disk. So Netgear does recommend making a backup before you replace or upgrade disks.
usncole wrote:
I would like to swap all of the drives with 14tb ones without data loss. Would I simply replace one drive at a time, waiting for everything to fully transfer, and then moving onto the next disk?
Yes, hot-swap one drive at a time (NAS running), and wait for the resync to complete before doing the next. With XRAID, you will see some expansion after the second drive resyncs (and more after the third and fourth drives resync). With FlexRAID there is no expansion until the fourth disk resyncs.
If you go with 4x8 TB + 2x14 TB, you need to switch to XRAID first. Then hot-insert the 14 TB drives into empty bays one at a time, and wait for the resync to complete. The volume will expand to 32 TB after the first 14 TB disk resyncs, and to 46 TB after the second 14 TB disk resyncs.
Note the volume is marked as degraded as soon as you remove a drive (or when you first add one to the array). It remains degraded until the resync completes.
- Thanks for that info. I feel pretty stupid right now since I actually meant 8x4TB drives, but your information should still be relevant. I appreciate the assistance.
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