NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
Solved
RN104 Capacity does not increase when swapping out to larger disks
I had 4 disks with varying capacities in running Raid5 (appears to have defaulted to that). I have changed out a failed drive to a 4TB and thought whilst I'm at it I will swap out the 1.5TB to anothe...
Basso6054 wrote:
Do I need to let it complete its "Resync Data" process before I log in and start the setup wizard and configuration restoration? Judging by the current progress it looks like it will take about 20 to 30 hours.
Again if there's any risk I can wait.
Thanks.
It's building the RAID groups and computing the parity blocks for each of them now - that requires either reading or writing every block on every disk. With your particular combination of disk sizes, there are three different groups that need to be built (4x2TB, 3x1TB, 2x1TB). The completion time is hard to estimate - usually the NAS is reporting the percentage completion of the group it is currently working on, and not the whole set.
You can start the setup wizard, then reinstall any apps, and finally restore the configuration before the resync completes. While you could also start restoring the data, it usually works out faster if you wait for the resync to finish (doing both at the same time causes a lot of disk thrashing).
Sandshark wrote:
You currently have one layer with 4x1TB, one with 3x.5TB and one with 2 x .5TB. That sounds like what you'd get from 1TB + 1.5TB +2TB + 3TB. You'd also have 1TB of the 3TB unused at that point.
Right. Likely at that point you ( Basso6054 ) switched to flexraid, which probably was a mistake.
Sandshark wrote:
I'm not sure the GUI is smart enough to let you do that.
I'm using XRAID myself, so it's not something I've tried. But I think you should be able to expand the existing RAID groups and make one more from the GUI. Whether you can make two more depends on the logical partition issue that Sandshark brought up.
If you want to go forward with flexraid, then you'd add the second 4 TB drive. Then after resync you'd
- expand the second RAID group from 3x.5TB RAID-5 to 4x.5TB RAID-5.
- expand the third RAID group from 2x.5TB RAID-1 to 4x.5TB RAID-5.
That would increase your volume from 4.5 TB to 6 TB (5.46 TiB).
I'd then create a 2x2TB RAID-1 RAID group with the two 4TB drives, and add that to the existing volume. That would bring it up to 8 TB (7.28 TiB). That wastes 1 TB of space on the 3 TB drive, but avoids the risk that you can't create two more RAID groups. Then later on you can upgrade the two remaining drives to 4 TB, which would give you a 12 TB volume (using all the space on all the disks).
Sandshark wrote:
If you have or can create a backup and can accept the down time, a factory default will clean things up a lot and let you go back to XRAID. That is what I recommend.
Yes, I agree. You'd end up with simpler disk structure (removing two unnecessary partitions/RAID groups), and you wouldn't be wasting any space.
Though if you have no backup now, I strongly recommend making one. RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe - many folks here have learned that the hard way.
Okay so I've taken a data and configuration back up and running a restore to default. Will I need to move all the data back on or should it recover that itself?
Will my configuration back up return the array to Flex-Raid or allow me to use XRaid?
I don't mind starting from scratch, would rather patiently build this from ground up if necessary than try to short cut anything.
The NAS display is currently showing "Resync data 35.65%" and progressing slowly (which is fine). I can log in using the original factory password but have not run the set up wizard as I do not want to overwrite any recovery process it is working on.
Once again thanks for your help.
If you have any apps installed, make sure you re-install them before restoring the configuration backup. I don't think the configuration restoration will change you to FlexRAID. But if it does, you should be able to switch back to XRAID since you now have a more simple volume.
Then, yes, the last thng you will need to do is restore all the data.
Do I need to let it complete its "Resync Data" process before I log in and start the setup wizard and configuration restoration? Judging by the current progress it looks like it will take about 20 to 30 hours.
Again if there's any risk I can wait.
Thanks.
You can do it concurrently, but it'll just slow things down. It's best to wait.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
