ReadyNAS Ultra 6 expansion

ruudpel wrote:
Hi Stephen, I started out with 3 x 2TB drives. That's how I purchased the NAS so I guess that's the 'default'. I later added drive 4, 5 and 6. Which means I will have the 8TB problem right? Does that mean I am pretty much forced to do a factory reset? What would your advice then be?

So you started with a 4 TB volume, and can expand to a little more than 12. You are at 10 TB now. As Vandermerwe says that means you can upgrade two drives to 4 TB, but no more. If you are 99% full now, then you want a volume size of at least 13 TB just to get enough free space.

So I think you do need to reset, I'd suggest going for a 16 TB volume size. That would be 4x4TB+2x2TB. (5x4TB can also work, though the procedure below assumes 4x4TB+2x2TB).

Either way you need to have enough storage in place to have an 8 TB volume when you do the reset.

If you want to preserve your data:

Purchase four 4 TB drives and a USB enclosure. You can connect them (one at a time) to a PC, and format them (NTFS for windows). Copy the data on the NAS over the network to these drives - three of the 4 will hold the data. You'll find it is much faster to copy data over a wired ethernet connection to use the ultra's backup ports.

After you have all the data, do a factory reset with your existing 6x2TB setup. After the reset you
(a) first reinstall any addons you are using
(b) reconfigure the NAS with the right shares, users, etc
(c) then hot-insert the empty 4 TB drive into the NAS (replacing a 2TB drive). Wait for resync, which will likely take 1/2 day. The volume size will still be 10 TB.

(d) Copy 4 TB of data from one of 4 TB backups to the NAS.
(e) then hot-insert that 4 TB drive into the NAS (replacing a second 2TB drive). Wait for resync, which could take a day. The volume size should grow to 12 TB. Note that the expansion will probably require a reboot after the resync.

(f) Copy 4 TB of data from the second 4 TB backup to the NAS.
(g) hot-insert the 2nd backup disk into the NAS (replacing the third 2 TB drive), and wait for resync. The volume should grow to 14 TB.

(h) copy the remaining data from the last 4 TB backup onto the NAS
(i) hot insert the last 4 TB drive (replacing the fourth 2 TB drive), and wait for resync. The volume should grow to 16 TB.

This process is tedious (will likely take about a week of calendar time), but should preserve your data. It can be adapted to 5x4TB if you want to go that route. Basically you do the reset with 2x4TB+2x2TB in place. That gives you the 8 TB starting point you need. You replace the two 2TB drives as shown above, and simply insert the last drive into an empty slot. The benefit of 5x4TB is that you can add a last 4 TB drive later for dual-redundancy - improving data safety, but keeping with the 16 TB volume size.


Also, at some point you should look into a backup solution. If you can afford to do that now, it would simplify the upgrade path I outlined above.