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ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus Expansion Help
Hello. A couple questions, and I apologize as I am sure theyve been asked before. My search wasnt of any help. I have used the ReadyNAS Ultra 4 Plus for a few years now for movies and music with (4) Western Digital Green drives, currently each is 2TB. I think previously I had 1TB, but dont recall. Anyway, I am getting close to capacity, have 1.2TB left. So I purchased (2) Western Digital Red 3TB NAS drives. I removed disk 1 and inserted one of the new 3TB drives. It resynced for about 5 hours and upon completion, it shows it as a 2TB drive. I have read about expansion limits and needed to do a full reset but I dont think I have used the expansion limits yet. Is that the only answer as to why its showing as a 2TB drive? If I do need to reset the NAS I will need to run a backup first, my question is, I have around 4TB of movies stored on my NAS, how can I do a back up of all this data? I apologize for being all over the place here, and I hope I have explained my situation and questions properly! Here is a copy of what my volume shows..as you can see, disk 1 isnt allocating the full amount! Thank you so much for any help you can provide!
| Configuration: | RAID Level X-RAID2, 4 disks | |
| Status: | Redundant |
RAID Disks:
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| 1858 GB allocated | ||||
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| 1858 GB allocated | ||||
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| 1858 GB allocated | ||||
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| 1858 GB allocated |
The ultra can't expand the space until you insert the second 3 TB drive. After the initial resync, it should prompt you to reboot, and then the volume should expand by 1 TB.
There are two limits to expansion:
(a) the volume can't expand over 16 TiB. You are nowhere close to that limit.
(b) the volume can't expand more than 8 TiB from the initial size. You could reach that eventually, but you are not there yet. If you started with a single 1 TB drive ,you'd still be able to expand to 4x3TB.
As far as backup goes, your data is never safe if it is only stored on one device. RAID arrays (and NAS) can fail in ways that lose your data. So I do strongly recommend that you put a backup plan in place. You should also consider a UPS.
Multiple USB drives are commonly used for NAS backup (though you might need to split your movies into two shares). I use other NAS myself.
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The ultra can't expand the space until you insert the second 3 TB drive. After the initial resync, it should prompt you to reboot, and then the volume should expand by 1 TB.
There are two limits to expansion:
(a) the volume can't expand over 16 TiB. You are nowhere close to that limit.
(b) the volume can't expand more than 8 TiB from the initial size. You could reach that eventually, but you are not there yet. If you started with a single 1 TB drive ,you'd still be able to expand to 4x3TB.
As far as backup goes, your data is never safe if it is only stored on one device. RAID arrays (and NAS) can fail in ways that lose your data. So I do strongly recommend that you put a backup plan in place. You should also consider a UPS.
Multiple USB drives are commonly used for NAS backup (though you might need to split your movies into two shares). I use other NAS myself.
Thanks, I have inserted the second 3TB and its resyncing. Can you suggest a decent UPS? Currently only use high Joules rated Surge Protectors but have looked at some UPS machines but honestly dont have much knowledge on those.
I use cyberpower, but APC is very popular. You want a model with a USB interface to the NAS - then the NAS will be told to shutdown then the battery level gets critical.
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