Have a new RN42800 with drives arriving in the next day or two and want to set it up with X-Raid in Raid5 format. From what I've seen in the Netgear Raid Calculator, it appears the system will set up as Raid 6 costing me a lot of storage space. Is this true? If so how to you get around the Raid 6 to set up with Raid 5? Tried posting this earlier but apparently it went off into cyberland.

Hi johnw248 Yes that is correct, the NAS is cofigured using X-RAID and will have more than 6 drives it will use RAID6 as it's RAID level. X-RAID dynamically changes it's RAID type depending on the number of drives the NAS has. Flex-RAID on the other hand maintains its RAID configuration. So if you intend to have RAID 5 as your configuration then you should use this. By default, your system’s hard disks are configured into a single X-RAID volume except for models only supporting Flex-RAID (RR4360) but you can change the RAID mode that your NAS is using. You can now switch from X-RAID to Flex-RAID but changing the RAID level of a volume erases all data. If data is stored on your system, you must back up the data to another storage device before changing the RAID level. Changing RAID X-RAID vs Flex-RAID Software Manual Hope this helps! Regards

What you could try is powering down, and removing all but one disk. Then do a factory install from the boot menu. That should complete without resyncing, and you should be able to switch to flexraid and destroy the volume right away. Then hot-insert the remaining drives, format them, and then create the RAID-5 volume you want.

I'm wondering if the following set-up routine would work for the 428: 1. Install six of the 8TB HGST NAS disks and proceed with normal first set-up: power on/discovery/admin and let the unit configure with X-Raid in Raid 52. Change from X-Raid to Flex-Raid3. Install the remaining two discs and then from the Admin page expand the Flex-Raid volume to include the remaining two disks.Is this the easiest and fastest way to accomplish this without undue formatting time?

Hi @johnw248 With Flex-RAID formatting, if you want to add disks to expand your storage capacity, you must back up the data to another system, add a disk, reformat the RAID volume, and restore the data to the new RAID volume. Disks added to a Flex-RAID volume can only be used for protection. They cannot be used for storage (horizontal expansion). You will have to switch back to X-RAID to use the disks as data storage but that will make your RAID Level to RAID 6 and if you will switch back to Flex-RAID a format is again needed to be on RAID 5. So it will be better to add all the disks once configured, destroy and create a volume with RAID Level 5 as your choice. Note: Newer firmware has Flex-RAID enhancements if you want read this thread. Please see the following articles as well regarding expansion Adding protection on Flex-RAIDReadyNAS Volume Expansion Note: From 6.9.3 Manual Horizontally Expand a Flex-RAID Volume Horizontal expansion of a Flex-RAID volume is possible, but more complex and less space efficient than expanding an X-RAID volume. In effect, you create a new Flex-RAID volume and ReadyNAS OS uses both the existing and new volumes as parts of the same larger volume. Other configurations are possible, but We recommend expanding the volume by the same number of disks as the original volume; for example, expand a 3-disk RAID 5 Flex-RAID volume by adding three disks. To horizontally expand a Flex-RAID volume:1. Add disks to the ReadyNAS, if necessary.2. Log in to the local admin page.3. Select System > Volumes.4. Select the volume to expand.5. Select the unallocated disks to add to the volume. When you select disks additional buttons appear on the volume.6. Select the Expand button. A Window opens asking you to verify you want to expand the volume.7. Select the Yes button. The volume expands immediately, but requires a resync, which starts immediately. The volume display includes a resync progress bar. Thank you @StephenB for pointing this out, I have requested for the article to be updated. It is somehow outdated not incorrect. Regards

With your 8x8GB with RAID5 you will get 56GB of the 64GB, while the RAID6 solution will render 48GB usable space for you. However you could see the loss of usable space as some kind of cost for insurance against failure of the complete array and hence complete loss of all data on it. With RAID5 one of the 8 disks can safely fail and your array will still work in a degraded mode until you replace the one broken disk with a healthy one. Should a second drive fail before the repair your whole data array would be gone. With RAID6 even 2 of 8 disks could safely fail and your data array would be still function in degraded mode. The status of the array would return to healthy after you would have installed the replacements, finally With the increasing number of drives in an array the probability of one of them failing is just increasing. Therefore NETGEAR's policy to automatically configure an array of >=6 as RAID6 has a good reason and seems to be very wise. Depending on the importance of the data you are going to put on your array you might want to stick with RAID6, though.

RN42800 new install with 8 HGST NAS 8TB Drives how to set up as X-Raid with Raid 5

11 Replies

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Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Apr 22, 2018
Hi johnw248

Yes that is correct, the NAS is cofigured using X-RAID and will have more than 6 drives it will use RAID6 as it's RAID level. X-RAID dynamically changes it's RAID type depending on the number of drives the NAS has. Flex-RAID on the other hand maintains its RAID configuration. So if you intend to have RAID 5 as your configuration then you should use this.

By default, your system’s hard disks are configured into a single X-RAID volume except for models only supporting Flex-RAID (RR4360) but you can change the RAID mode that your NAS is using.

You can now switch from X-RAID to Flex-RAID but changing the RAID level of a volume erases all data. If data is stored on your system, you must back up the data to another storage device before changing the RAID level.

Changing RAID

X-RAID vs Flex-RAID

Software Manual

Hope this helps!

Regards
- johnw248
  Aspirant
  Apr 22, 2018
  I'm wondering if the following set-up routine would work for the 428:
  
  1. Install six of the 8TB HGST NAS disks and proceed with normal first set-up: power on/discovery/admin and let the unit configure with X-Raid in Raid 5
  2. Change from X-Raid to Flex-Raid
  3. Install the remaining two discs and then from the Admin page expand the Flex-Raid volume to include the remaining two disks.
  Is this the easiest and fastest way to accomplish this without undue formatting time?
  - Marc_V
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    Apr 22, 2018
    Hi @johnw248
    
    With Flex-RAID formatting, if you want to add disks to expand your storage capacity, you must back up the data to another system, add a disk, reformat the RAID volume, and restore the data to the new RAID volume.
    
    Disks added to a Flex-RAID volume can only be used for protection. They cannot be used for storage (horizontal expansion). You will have to switch back to X-RAID to use the disks as data storage but that will make your RAID Level to RAID 6 and if you will switch back to Flex-RAID a format is again needed to be on RAID 5.
    
    So it will be better to add all the disks once configured, destroy and create a volume with RAID Level 5 as your choice.
    
    Note: Newer firmware has Flex-RAID enhancements if you want read this thread.
    
    Please see the following articles as well regarding expansion
    
    Adding protection on Flex-RAID
    ReadyNAS Volume Expansion
    
    Note: From 6.9.3 Manual
    
    Horizontally Expand a Flex-RAID Volume Horizontal expansion of a Flex-RAID volume is possible, but more complex and less space efficient than expanding an X-RAID volume. In effect, you create a new Flex-RAID volume and ReadyNAS OS uses both the existing and new volumes as parts of the same larger volume. Other configurations are possible, but We recommend expanding the volume by the same number of disks as the original volume; for example, expand a 3-disk RAID 5 Flex-RAID volume by adding three disks.
    
    To horizontally expand a Flex-RAID volume:
    1. Add disks to the ReadyNAS, if necessary.
    2. Log in to the local admin page.
    3. Select System > Volumes.
    4. Select the volume to expand.
    5. Select the unallocated disks to add to the volume. When you select disks additional buttons appear on the volume.
    6. Select the Expand button. A Window opens asking you to verify you want to expand the volume.
    7. Select the Yes button. The volume expands immediately, but requires a resync, which starts immediately. The volume display includes a resync progress bar.
    
    Thank you @StephenB for pointing this out, I have requested for the article to be updated. It is somehow outdated not incorrect.
    
    Regards
Retired_Member
Apr 22, 2018
With your 8x8GB with RAID5 you will get 56GB of the 64GB, while the RAID6 solution will render 48GB usable space for you.

However you could see the loss of usable space as some kind of cost for insurance against failure of the complete array and hence complete loss of all data on it.

With RAID5 one of the 8 disks can safely fail and your array will still work in a degraded mode until you replace the one broken disk with a healthy one. Should a second drive fail before the repair your whole data array would be gone.

With RAID6 even 2 of 8 disks could safely fail and your data array would be still function in degraded mode. The status of the array would return to healthy after you would have installed the replacements, finally

With the increasing number of drives in an array the probability of one of them failing is just increasing. Therefore NETGEAR's policy to automatically configure an array of >=6 as RAID6 has a good reason and seems to be very wise.

Depending on the importance of the data you are going to put on your array you might want to stick with RAID6, though.
- johnw248
  Aspirant
  Apr 22, 2018
  >>With your 8x8GB with RAID5 you will get 56GB of the 64GB, while the RAID6 solution will render 48GB usable space for you.
  
  I was using the Netgear Raid Calculator which shows 8x8 in X-Raid as 43.6 and Flex-Raid Level 5 at 50.8 which to me is losing an additional drive or that the "extra" protection costs the same as one 8TB HGST NAS drive.
  
  That's just too costly for my purposes, these are media files and while I wouldn't want to lose them, the extra protection for two disk failures is too high.
  - Retired_Member
    Apr 23, 2018
    Sorry for the confusion. For simplicity I was using TebiBytes while Netgear uses true TeraBytes in its calculator. Here is a link to shed a light on the difference.
    
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tebibyte
    
    As long as you are conscious about the risks all is fine. Good luck with the installion and lots of fun with your media hog.