NEWB 2TB + 1TB....? what will happen>?

Are you using X-RAID2. They would be rejected due to being smaller than the drives inserted previously.

yes im using XRAID2.
thanks for your response i shall get them on amazon.
I take it the best thing to do is add 3 more 2TB drives..
if i did that would i end up with 4TB data? and a mirror of that 4TB?

No you'd get 6TB. X-RAID2 uses RAID-5.

sorry im new to all this as you can see,

assuming i did that it would be

1) Drive one = 2tb of data
2) Mirror of 1)
3) 2tb expansion
4) 2tb expansion

im failing to see what the point of mirroring drive one would be, assuming i did this would i end up with one 6TB drive in my network and not 3x2TB?

i have tried reading the manual but i can't make sense of the logic. thank you again for your awnser

Take a look at X-RAID2 in Action

If any one disk failed data would remain intact. That's how RAID-5 works. You can google RAID-5.

Of course backups of important data primarily stored on the NAS are important. See Preventing Catastrophic Data Loss

chicknchock wrote:
sorry im new to all this as you can see, assuming i did that it would be 1) Drive one = 2tb of data 2) Mirror of 1) 3) 2tb expansion 4) 2tb expansion im failing to see what the point of mirroring drive one would be, assuming i did this would i end up with one 6TB drive in my network and not 3x2TB? i have tried reading the manual but i can't make sense of the logic. thank you again for your awnser

Drives fail. If you assume a 4 drive array, you will have about 1 disk failure per year (since consumer drives typically last 3-5 years).

With XRAID-2, you are getting single-drive redundancy. This protects your data even if one drive fails.

If two drives fail (which does happen btw) you would lose your data - so keeping up to date backups is still important. However, rebuilding the NAS from backups is a time-consuming process when you have lots of data - several days at least. So the RAID protection is still is an important benefit.

Plus, the redundancy is what makes it possible to upgrade a smaller drive with a larger one.

Hi! I'm in a similar situation, so excuse me for jumping in rather than creating a new topic...

I've got 2x new 3TB and 1x old unused 2TB drives. Would installing them would give me 5TB? My understanding is that this results in 2 "layers" (2TB * (3-1) across 3 drives + 1TB * (2-1) across the 2 larger drives).

I'm not technically inclined, so i dont know what is meant by "layers". If I plan to replace the 2TB drive with 2x 3TB drive in a month, am I better off not using the 2TB drive in the first place?

I guess my 2nd question is really asking... Will X-RAID2 convert the 2 layers in one (3T * (4-1) ) layer, or will I have a 2TB and a 1TB layer each across 4 drives? Is a single layer better than two? Or is "layer" really only an abstraction for determining capacity?

Thanks!

p.s. Oh, yeah... NV+ v2

If you have 2 3TB drives, and 1 2TB drive, then the total volume would be 5 TB.

You generally don't need to worry about the layering, the quick way to work out the total storage is to pretend the largest drive isn't there, and total up the others.

However what you'd have initially is one 3x2TB layer (2 TB from each drive) and one 2x1TB layer (the 1 TB remaining on each of the 2 TB drives). All this looks like one volume to the users.

If you then replace the 2 TB drive with a 3 TB drive, the RAID array is restriped into a single 3x3TB layer. Adding the last 3 TB results in a 4x3TB layer.

However, kaige, this is assuming you start with a 2TB drive, not a 3TB drive. If your volume is established with 2x3TB drives, you cannot then add the 2TB drive. In X-Raid and X-Raid2 you cannot add a drive smaller than the current smallest drive.

I did a factory install with the 2x3TB + 1x2TB plugged in at the same time. It created a 3.7TB volume initially. Then after reboot and resyncing, I ended up with slightly over 4.5TB. Does that sound right? So, almost 500GB goes into "overhead"?