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Forum Discussion
Mixing drive makes/models within a NAS
firmware 6.7.4
readynas 2120
I have my nas configured as a raid 5 (4 disk, 2tb/disk).
I need to expand my storage capacity. I was going to put in 4tb hard drives. My plan was to pull out 1 of 2tb disks, replace it with the a 4tb, wait for the NAS to sync and then repeat the process with the other 3 disks. As I understand it, once the last disk is installed and synced then and only then will my storage capacity increase, correct?
2nd question, I see that this has been asked before, but I wanted to ask again.
I currently have 1----4tb hard drive, Seagate 5900rpm 4TB NAS HDD SATA 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Bare Drive (ST4000VN000)
Would it be a problem to get 3 more drives that were different brands, but same capacity?
I was looking at either the Seagate 5900 4TB IronWolf NAS SATA 6Gb/s NCQ 64MB Cache 3.5-Inch Internal Hard Drive (ST4000VN008
Or
WD Red 4TB NAS Hard Disk Drive - 5400 RPM Class SATA 6 Gb/s 64MB Cache 3.5 Inch - WD40EFRX
16 Replies
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FG wrote:
As I understand it, once the last disk is installed and synced then and only then will my storage capacity increase, correct?
No. That's true with OS 4.1 NAS. But with your RAID mode on OS 6, you will see expansion when the second disk is added. The expansion will happen after the volume is resynced, and you might be prompted to reboot before it begins.
FG wrote:
Would it be a problem to get 3 more drives that were different brands, but same capacity?
It's not a problem, and both the IronWolf and the WD Reds are reasonable choices for the NAS.
Some people like mix-and-match, under the theory that it might be more robust. I haven't seen any real data on that, and I'm not mixing/matching myself. But I don't see any harm in it either.
Thank you for your feed back on mix and match!
I just pulled the existing/current disk (smaller 2tb) 4 (far right bay) from NAS and dropped in the new 4tb. At this point X-RAID is OFF, I have a raid 5 configuration.
I went to NAS GUI, under volumes tab I had my existing volume and a additional/new volume called New Volume. When I clicked on NEW VOLUME I had options to Destory or balance. I thought I was going to see an option that would say something........add to existing volume....or something like that. I then turned X-RAID on and the NAS added the NEW VOLUME to the existing volume and started resyncing the data.
Does this all sound correct so far, the normal process when expanding storage capacity when using RAID 5 ?
Thank you for your help!
It didn't expand initially because XRAID was off.
This sounds normal so far.
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