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Forum Discussion

darklight's avatar
darklight
Aspirant
Jan 03, 2014

JBOD over multiple disks

I have a RN102 that has been running X-Raid on a single 2TB disk for a while, now I want to expand the storage. I don't need redundancy, so I switched the volume to Flex-RAID (JBOD), intending to add a new disk and create a new volume on it.

Now when I added the second disk, and click System-Volumes and the new disk icon, the existing volume shows options to either add parity or expand volume. The manual says that JBOD only works on single disks, so I'm confused about what will happen. Is this a new feature since the manual was written? I'm on 6.1.4 firmware.

14 Replies

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  • Between step 1 and step 2 you should delete the volume on disk 2 using the GUI first, before removing the disk.
    I would also backup the data on disk 1 before you do this.
    Although data should be preserved during the switch, I'd recommend having a backup before you do it.
  • Between step 1 and step 2 you should delete the volume on disk 2 using the GUI first, before removing the disk"
    I would also backup the data on disk 1 before you do this.
    Although data should be preserved during the switch, I'd recommend having a backup before you do it.
  • Do you think having multiple JBOD over multiple disks slow down read/write speed and response?
  • StephenB's avatar
    StephenB
    Guru - Experienced User
    nas102 wrote:
    Do you think having multiple JBOD over multiple disks slow down read/write speed and response?
    Generally not, though it depends on exactly what you are doing. In the specific case of RAID-1, the impact should be minimal. I run my RN102 in jbod, and I see the same results with NAStester that folks running xraid/raid-1 report.

    Writing to a RAID array requires updating two disk sectors (on two different disks) for every write. For sequential writes, that will be slower than writing to a single disk. Random I/O is more complicated, since spreading the writes over different disks can reduce seek time. Still, the extra I/O usually makes it slower than jbod.

    Reading from a RAID array is a bit different, since there are no parity block updates. Then spreading the reads over the physical disks can improve throughput. But in practice, sequential disk reads are faster than gigabit ethernet anyway. Random read I/O might be faster with multiple disks.

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