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zigdapig's avatar
zigdapig
Aspirant
May 18, 2017

Replace disks (FlexRAID RAID 1) with larger disks

Hi,

 

My Readynas Ultra II is currently setup as FlexRAID (RAID 1) with 2 500 GByte disks.

I now have 2 brand new 4 TB disks.

 

What are the steps I should follow to replace both disks (while keeping my data intact),

and have it expand the size of my volumes ?


If I understand it correctly from topics I read, the FlexRAID volume will not simply (automatically) expand to the new drive size, is that correct ?

Kind regards.

5 Replies

Replies have been turned off for this discussion
  • After looking up some more, it seems like I should be able to add another volume to the RAID,

    but I cannot find any button which says "New volume" or "Add volume" (see screenshot)

    I am also considering doing a entire "backup" op volume C to a USB-disk,

    but apparantly there is no way to do a "reverse" backup (restore) from US-disk to volume C ?

    So does this mean I need to backup/restore all folders under C separately ?

     

    Please help, I'm really stuck here...

     

    Raid.PNG


  • zigdapig wrote:

    If I understand it correctly from topics I read, the FlexRAID volume will not simply (automatically) expand to the new drive size, is that correct ?


     

    If we were talking about OS6, I could explain that this isn't correct. Unfortunately, I don't recall the Flex-RAID vertical and horizontal expansion rules on RAIDiator 4.2. The user manual doesn't help.

    Maybe mdgm-ntgr could help clarify this.

     

    Flex-RAID on OS6 (Before 6.7.0 anyway - I think there was some changes introduced in 6.7.0):

    • Vertical expansion occurs when all the HDDs are upgraded. Compared to X-RAID which creates sub-arrays on the unused capacity, Flex-RAID "extends" the existing array once unused capacity is available on all members.
    • Horizontal expansion occurs when there is enough new disks to create a new vdev. Compared to X-RAID adds the disks one by one into the RAID array (or layers of RAID arrays), Flex-RAID creates a new vdev and add it to the BTRFS volume (in single mode).

     

    Flex-RAID on RAIDiator 4.2:

    • Vertical expansion rules?
    • Horizontal expansion rules?

     

    It's correct that you can backup your entire volume on a USB disk but cannot restore your entire volume from a USB disk (which is reasonnable when considering that the folders on the USB disk would have to be "converted" to shares).

    You can recreate your shares and use a backup job to restore the content of the first folder on the USB disk to the first share on the volume, when finished, change to second, etc.

     

     

    About the "new volume" button, I don't recall if on RAIDiator 4.2, you can create a second volume on unused capacity of already used disk. I don't think this is possible on OS6, but not sure on RAIDiator 4.2. It rings a bell. That said, I do think the button only appears if there is unused capacity (if it's possible) or unused drive.

    • zigdapig's avatar
      zigdapig
      Aspirant

      Hi, thanks for your reply.

       

      I just went ahead and inserted the disks, and the volume size was indeed not expanded automatically.
      But you were correct : the "new volume" button appeared...
      So I just made additional volumes, and now I'm happy again.

      • jak0lantash's avatar
        jak0lantash
        Mentor

        Thanks for confirming. So Flex-RAID is indeed very different on RAIDiator 4.2 and ReadyNAS OS6.

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