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Solved
ReadyNAS 104 in X-RAID mode does not expand adding an additional disk
Hi, I have a ReadyNas 104 (RN104|ReadyNAS 100 Series) running firmware version 6.9.1 and I had only one 2TB (WD Red) drive inserted into it. Everything is working fine but my drive is almost full. S...
DwaineB09 wrote:
If I understand you correctly, as soon as I install that first 8TB drive, that would then become the redunancy drive
There really isn't a "redundancy drive". The parity blocks (which are the redundancy) are scattered across all the drives - and data blocks also are scattered across all drives.
When you add your first drive (2+4+8TB) you will end up with a 6 TB volume size (4 TB bigger than what you have right now). 4TB of space on the 8 TB drive will be unused. The expansion will happen in two phases. First the volume will expand horizontally to 4 TB, then the system will reboot (or perhaps you will need to reboot it), and it will vertically expand to 6 TB.
When you add the second one (2+4+8+8), the system will expand to 14 TB. I'm not sure if there a reboot will be needed for this step or not.
When you upgrade the 2 TB drive (8+4+8+8), it expands to 20 Tb, and upgrading the last one will expand it to 24 TB.
This will work, but the resync times will be long (and take longer for each expansion step). Every data block on the disks is either read or written in each step. As the total size grows, that takes longer and longer.
If you could back up your current volume, it would be faster to do a factory install with 4x8TB in place, reconfigure the NAS, and then restore the files from your backup.
DwaineB09 wrote:
Also from what I can understand, I could get an 8TB external drive, plug it into the USB slot and use that as my backup drive
Backup is important, though of course over time 8 TB won't be enough for a 24 TB volume.
Almost all 8 TB external drives are SMR technology. Folks have had trouble with them in linux systems, so you might want to research that before purchasing an SMR model. Unfortunately the datasheets often don't say if they are SMR or not.
Thank you for your reply.
OK no problem.
This is my plan, currently I have two drives (a 2TB and an 4TB), I'm goint to upgrade that to a 2,4,8. Afterwards upgrade that to 2,4,8,8, then go onto 8,4,8,8, and finally hve 4 8TB drives.
If I understand you correctly, as soon as I install that first 8TB drive, that would then become the redunancy drive and I would get 6TB of available space in total (disrearding the TiB) and so one. Also from what I can understand, I could get an 8TB external drive, plug it into the USB slot and use that as my backup drive so I would have one internal 8TB drive as my redundancy drive and have an external 8TB drive as my backup drive and in the end have 24TB of available storage.
Would that work?
Is there anything wrong with that?
DwaineB09 wrote:
If I understand you correctly, as soon as I install that first 8TB drive, that would then become the redunancy drive
There really isn't a "redundancy drive". The parity blocks (which are the redundancy) are scattered across all the drives - and data blocks also are scattered across all drives.
When you add your first drive (2+4+8TB) you will end up with a 6 TB volume size (4 TB bigger than what you have right now). 4TB of space on the 8 TB drive will be unused. The expansion will happen in two phases. First the volume will expand horizontally to 4 TB, then the system will reboot (or perhaps you will need to reboot it), and it will vertically expand to 6 TB.
When you add the second one (2+4+8+8), the system will expand to 14 TB. I'm not sure if there a reboot will be needed for this step or not.
When you upgrade the 2 TB drive (8+4+8+8), it expands to 20 Tb, and upgrading the last one will expand it to 24 TB.
This will work, but the resync times will be long (and take longer for each expansion step). Every data block on the disks is either read or written in each step. As the total size grows, that takes longer and longer.
If you could back up your current volume, it would be faster to do a factory install with 4x8TB in place, reconfigure the NAS, and then restore the files from your backup.
DwaineB09 wrote:
Also from what I can understand, I could get an 8TB external drive, plug it into the USB slot and use that as my backup drive
Backup is important, though of course over time 8 TB won't be enough for a 24 TB volume.
Almost all 8 TB external drives are SMR technology. Folks have had trouble with them in linux systems, so you might want to research that before purchasing an SMR model. Unfortunately the datasheets often don't say if they are SMR or not.
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