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RN104 and Raid
Hi,
I've read a few posts but have not found an answer to the following.
Is there any way to force an RN104 into Raid 1 mode when populated with four HDDs?
And if there is what is the pattern of the array. ie disk 2 mirrors disc 1 and disc 4 mirrors disc 3 or some other arrangement?
I am about to populate an RN104 with larger NAS drives in stages and prefer to keep them as Raid 1 when I insert the second pair.
I understand the first pair will be configured for Raid 1, but don't want the addition of the second pair to trigger a change to Raid 5. I'm happy to accept the lower array size that this would cause.
thanks
Sandshark wrote:
Budget and whether you want to have to manually spread shares across the volumes are two main drivers if drive sizes and rotation speeds are consistent.
Expanding RAID-10 might be more complicated than expanding two RAID-1 volumes.
One thing to think about is whether you actually need two RAID-1 arrays, or if one will do. Drive prices (in $/TB) are pretty flat right now between 8 and 12 TB. Getting one pair of larger drives now, and leaving two bays empty for the future might also be a good strategy.
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OzzieNASuser wrote:
I am about to populate an RN104 with larger NAS drives in stages and prefer to keep them as Raid 1 when I insert the second pair.
Switch to FlexRAID by clicking on the XRAID control on the volume tab. The green stripe on that control will disappear.
Then you
- insert the two disks
- select them from the center graphic on the volume page
- click on new volume on the right of the page
- create a second RAID-1 volume
If the disks are already formatted, then you'll need to format them in the NAS before you create the volume.
There is more information on this in the software manual: https://www.downloads.netgear.com/files/GDC/READYNAS-100/READYNAS_OS_6_SM_EN.pdf
StephenB 's solution will give you two separate volumes. But you'll have to manually split shares and deal with two size limits between the two volumes. It sounds to me more like you want RAID10 -- two concatinated drives mirrored by two other concatinated drives. While the ReadyNAS can do that in FlexRAID mode, I don't believe it can go from RAID1 to RAID10 since the underlying MDADM can't go directly between them. Via SSH, you would have to convert the RAID1 to a single drive RAID0 (which is what a ReadyNAS JBOD drive is "under the hood"), and you could then convert to RAID 10 either via SSH or the GUI. If you are comfortable doing it, here my article on downsizing a RAID: Reducing-RAID-size-removing-drives-WITHOUT-DATA-LOSS-is-possible. Here is another useful article that's not ReadyNAS specific: Converting-raid1-to-raid10-online.
Frankly, this takes a long time and backing up and starting from scratch as RAID10 is probably the better solution if the two volume solution isn't what you are looking for.
Many thanks to both StephenB and Sandshark for their prompt and informative replies.
On balance I believe the pair of concatenated drives would be the optimum solution, but it raises some questions that I will ask for clarification:
1. Is the best way forward to use drives from the same manufacturer and of the same capacity?
2. I suspect that proceeding in stages, ie a pair of drive now in Raid 1 followed later by a another pair of drives - which I think would entail backing up the raid 1 pair then configuring the four drives as a pair of concatenated drives in raid 10 and then re-establishing the contents from the backup would be a quite long process?
3. A better solution, since I have the contents of the RN104 already backed up, would be to acquire the four drives and then proceed thus avoiding the intermediate step of an initial two drives in raid 1? Of course this raises the question of a rather large expenditure of cash that I was hoping I could spread across a few months.
Thanks again for the replies
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