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Forum Discussion
Issue with expanding storage in Netgear Ready NAS 4312S
Hello,
We have a Netgear ReadyNAS 4312s with 72T storage (12 * 8TB disks in RAID6). Six months back, we bought a 24-bay Netgear expansion chassis and populated it with 5 8TB disks. We had to create a new RAID group for this. Now, when we add a new disk to the expansion chassis, we cannot expand the storage in RAID Group 2.
Upon checking further, realized that we aren't running X-raid in this RAID group and while trying to enable this, I am getting below error.
Any idea on how can I expand my storage?
I understand that Netgear uses mdraid. Is it possible to expand the storage manually then? Have anyone tried this? If yes, can you please provide me with the steps?
Couple of points to note:
1. This is our primary storage and we cannot afford to have any data loss.
2. We do not have enough space for backing up this data and there is no backup for the data stored in this.
Thanks,
Ram Kumar
31 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
Once you put in a new drive, you should be able to select Expand in the volume menu. Expansion options are more limited than under XRAID (I think you have to stick with same-size drives), but the option is there.
XRAID is not an option with multiple volumes.
And by the way, even with RAID6, having that much data not backed up is just asking for trouble.
>> Once you put in a new drive, you should be able to select Expand in the volume menu.
I missed to add this in the first message, I did try this but nothing is happening when I click the 'Expand' button. Do we have any logs that I can refer to that will help me debug this further?
>> XRAID is not an option with multiple volumes.
Okay, I didn't know that. So, if we have multiple RAID groups, then we cannot have X-raid, right?
>> And by the way, even with RAID6, having that much data not backed up is just asking for trouble.
Yes, I understand. We are in the process of building our backup NAS.
Thanks for your response.
euhr wrote:
>> XRAID is not an option with multiple volumes.
Okay, I didn't know that. So, if we have multiple RAID groups, then we cannot have X-raid, right?
XRAID definitely creates multiple RAID groups when you have mixed disk sizes, but manages them automatically (concatenating them into a single volume). Your issue is a bit different - a volume that spans multiple chassis is problematic, since it depends on both chassis being powered and having a good connection between them. So Netgear has chosen not to allow that in XRAID.
But in FlexRAID you should be able to expand the existing RAID group on the new chassis, or create a new RAID group and concatenate it with your existing volume. For RAID-6, the new RAID group would need at least 4 disks though. There is a guide that might be helpful here: https://www.netgear.com/images/support/WP_ReadyNAS%20FlexRAID%20Optimization%20Guide_18May17.pdf
One quick question, I was looking for a way that we can take configuration backups periodically (say every sunday). I looked around in the NAS GUI but couldn't find any option. Is it possible to do this in ReadyNAS 4312S?
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