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Forum Discussion
Rn316 Raid expansion via esata
Hi, I am using a Readynas 316 (6drives) and want to know if it's possible to expand the Raid to 8 drives by attaching 2 external Drives to the esata Ports of the machine. in theory this should work...
BastelSwastel wrote:
Hi,
I am using a Readynas 316 (6drives) and want to know if it's possible to expand the Raid to 8 drives by attaching 2 external Drives to the esata Ports of the machine.
in theory this should work...
No, and it is actually a really bad idea. Any disconnection of the external drives would destroy the volume.
What you could do is create two additional volumes on the external drives, and shift some shares there. But I think a better plan is to upgrade two or more of your internal drives to bigger ones. There are 16 TB drives on the hardware compatibility list for your NAS.
The OS will not allow you to expand a main chassis volume to another chassis connected to eSATA nor to create a volume from two independent eSATA devices precisely for the reasons StephenB mentions. You can create a secondary volume (even under XRAID) with a multi-drive chassis that has an eSATA multiplier, but that turns out to be very troublesome, a bit slow for normal operations, and horrendously slow for operations like a scrub or expansion.
I do not know if every eSATA multiplier chassis is compatible, since there are two main manufacturers of eSATA multiplier chips. But I did use a Sans Digital one until I got tired of all the hassles. Note that you will want a "dumb" eSATA chassis, not one that has built-in RAID or is also compatible with USB, Firewire, etc.
Frankly, a USB3 chassis with built-in RAID would likely work better, though it would not be integrated in with the OS as well. And, of course, a second NAS is also an option, though more costly.
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