Forum Discussion

Aspirant

Jul 12, 2020

Solved

ReadyNas 102, 2 x 2TB drives, RAID 1 - Can I replace the drives with bigger ones and keep my data?

I have a ReadyNas 102. It currently has 2 x 2TB drives in RAID 1. I want to replace the drives with bigger ones, probably 8TB. The best thing would be if I could take out one 2TB drive and p...

Marc_V
Jul 13, 2020
JackHorner

Welcome to the Community!

Yes, you will be doing a vertical expansion on your NAS. in this case RAID1 you will have to replace the 2 drives in order to properly expand the volume.

You can replace one drive at a time and let the resync complete on each procedure and you will have your data intact. There will be no problem on using different size disks but you will only be able to use the size of what the smaller disk has and will be able to use all of it once you have replace the other smaller drive.

You can also do what you have mentioned by backing up the data first on an external drive and then inserting both 8TB drives and initialize it to confgure the new drives and then transfer the data back to it once it's finished. IMO, it would be best to do the first option.

The NAS will be the one to do the job for you and you will just have to wait for it to finish :)

HTH

JackHorner

Aspirant

Jul 13, 2020

Thanks, that's reassuring. I will go ahead with the upgrade a disk at a time.

Sandshark

Sensei - Experienced User

Jul 14, 2020

After you insert the second drive, there will be two sync's: one for the original 1TB and one for the 7TB expansion. The second will be a lot longer than the first. The NAS will still be accessable during them, though probably a bit slower; but don't power off until they are both complete.

StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Jul 14, 2020
Sandshark wrote:

The NAS will still be accessable during them, though probably a bit slower

In the case of an RN102, it might be a lot slower. So be prepared for that.