Remove disks from RNDU6000 using RAID Level X-RAID2, 6 disks (with dual redundancy)

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patdman81 wrote:

I currently have my RNDU6000 setup with 6x3TB disks, using RAID Level X-RAID2, 6 disks with dual redundancy.

I want to increase the overall size, and the overall current size is current 10TB (99% full), which suggests I might have hit the 8TB increase limit (Not sure how to interpret the expansion log to verify this), but even if I have not, my goal is to increase the overall size to 15TB with single redundancy, so a factory reset seems likely needed.

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You can't move from dual-redundancy to single-redundancy and whether or not you've passed the 8TB expansion limit, the hard limit of not being able to expand beyond 16TB is going to be a problem for expansion in the future.

ReadyNAS OS 6 doesn't have these expansion limits and whilst running it on your system is not supported it can be done. After you backup your data it may be worth considering upgrading to OS6 so that you can expand in the future. I don't recommend single-redundancy with 6 disks as your volume can only withstand one disk failure.

patdman81 wrote:

To do this, I want to remove the 2 redunancy disks, plug into my PC, format anew, then use both of them plus a 5TB USB  to backup the entire lot of data.

Once backed up, I could do a full factory reset and create a new volume. I would start by adding 4x3TB disks (12TB), copy my data back, and finally re-add the last 2x3TB disks with a goal of of using the fifth to expand the size to 15TB, and the last disk to add redundancy.

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I would prefer it if you backed up to different disks, but if you really want to you can follow a process something like that. Except note that there will be redundancy along the way i.e. it will be 12TB with 5x3TB disks installed and will only expand to 15TB after adding the sixth disk.

patdman81 wrote:

However, I am not sure how to remove the disks properly.
If I hot-remove, I get the status of "Degraded. A disk failure will render this volume non-redundant.", which sounds fine to me but is there a nicer way to remove the disk(s)?

Am I going about this the correct way?

All help is greatly appreciated.

When you have removed the two disks if any of the remaining disks installed fails your volume would be lost. You should first check the smart stats eitehr in the download logs or clicking on the SMART+ button next to each disk in Frontview to see if there are signs of any disks failing (look for things like high reallocated sector count, ATA errors, any current pending sectors).