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RN316 Removing one drive
Hello all,
I have a RN316 with 6x6TB HDDs. This is actually a significant overkill for my current needs, so I would like to remove one of these drives and use it in another storage device (afte...
You cannot remove a drive and rebuild the array to be redundant, whether in FlexRAID or XRAID mode. I don't know what part of the manual you believe implied otherwise, but you can't. Assuming you have a redundant array (and with 6 drives in XRAID, you do), then you can remove one drive for the purpose of replacing it with a same size or larger drive. But while the drive is removed and before the replacement re-sync's, you will not have redundancy. So, if you remove or lose a second drive in that time, your volume is lost.
Your only option is to offload your data (to the backup you should already have), and factory default with the number of drives you want to re-start with.
Now, both BTRFS (the NAS file system) and MDADM (the NAS RAID system) have shrink options. So, theoretically, Netgear could implement a shrink capability. But, it's surely not trivial and they thus far have not done so.
Sorry for spamming the heck out of my own post, but this is ridiculous:
Netgear: This feature might added to the latest firmware release. Would there be anything else that I can assist you with today?
Me: Umm... I guess not. I just want to be clear with my understanding of what you are saying: I have a RAID system in effect that is supposed to allow for data integrity if one drive fails. However, if I remove a drive, the system breaks and all data is lost; however, if I shoot the drive while it is in the RN316, all my data will be fine because the RAID structure. Is this correct?
Netgear: That is correct Sir. Your system right now just have 1 disk fault tolerance.
You cannot remove a drive and rebuild the array to be redundant, whether in FlexRAID or XRAID mode. I don't know what part of the manual you believe implied otherwise, but you can't. Assuming you have a redundant array (and with 6 drives in XRAID, you do), then you can remove one drive for the purpose of replacing it with a same size or larger drive. But while the drive is removed and before the replacement re-sync's, you will not have redundancy. So, if you remove or lose a second drive in that time, your volume is lost.
Your only option is to offload your data (to the backup you should already have), and factory default with the number of drives you want to re-start with.
Now, both BTRFS (the NAS file system) and MDADM (the NAS RAID system) have shrink options. So, theoretically, Netgear could implement a shrink capability. But, it's surely not trivial and they thus far have not done so.
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