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Forum Discussion
Upgrade - replace with larger HDD, in RAID6, two at a time?
Anyone know if I replace two HDD at once in a RAID6, whether it will rebuild both at the same time? Whether that is quicker than two sequential upgrade swaps? (yes I know I expose it to risk from a...
I have expanded more than one added drive at a time by disabling XRAID, selecting the drives, and selecting "Expand". It definately took less time than one at a time. But I don't know what you could select for replacement of two drives. Just trying it sounds like a plan. If nothing else, it should do one then the other. If you don't disable XRAID first, then put the drives in with power off so it sees them at the same time. If you put them in with power on, it will see the first and start re-sync before you get the second in. When replacing drives, it might even start with the first one if XRAID is disabled and power is on.
Let us know what you find out.
Inconclusive unfortunately.
I had two previously removed HDDs.
On Windows I deleted the three partitions & formatted as NTFS.
Updated my backups.
Powered down NAS.
Pulled two drives, replaced them with the NTFS drives.
Powered up, RAIDAR was very concerned.
Unfortunately, on the Volume page they came up as unknown RAID volumes.
So I had to DESTROY them, as soon as I did the first it started resyncing.
So I shutdown/restarted, hoping it would see both available.
But I assuming it found it already resyncing one, so just kept going.
Currently looks like this:
That's after clicking on the dark HDD slot, those buttons are greyed-out.
I should have deleted the NTFS partition I think, then they may have been recognised as available.
But reading between the lines above, I suspect the first thing it wants to do is just get in sync.
Mon Jul 17 2017 4:37:48 Volume: Resyncing started for Volume N316AR6. Mon Jul 17 2017 4:37:35 Disk: Disk in channel 4 (Internal) changed state from RESYNC to ONLINE.
Mon Jul 17 2017 4:37:32 Volume: The resync operation finished on volume N316AR6. However, the volume is still degraded.So it just goes to resync the extra parity disc. That's good.
The initial sync when creating a volume is faster than subsequent resyncs.
Some prefer to power down, remove disks (label order), insert higher capacity disks with equal capacity, create a new volume and restore from backup.
There is a small performance benefit from having a single RAID layer and should a data recovery attempt be necessary it does make it a little easier.[Reminder to late readers - I have backups, don't try this unless you have good backups (note the plural), you could lose your NAS data if you have a failure during resync]
I decided to test it properly.
An in-place, two disc capacity upgrade of a RAID6 protected array.
So I pulled two trays,
copied a file to the NAS to dirty the pulled discs,
shutdown,
reseated the trays,
power up.
Tue Jul 18 2017 12:10:56 Volume: Resyncing started for Volume N316AR6. Tue Jul 18 2017 12:10:55 System: ReadyNASOS background service started.
Tue Jul 18 2017 12:10:48 System: External storage device connected.
Tue Jul 18 2017 12:10:46 Volume: Volume N316AR6 is Degraded.
Tue Jul 18 2017 11:59:45 System: The system is shutting down.
Tue Jul 18 2017 11:55:48 Disk: Disk Model:TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 Serial:353JZERKS was removed from Channel 2 of the head unit.
Tue Jul 18 2017 11:52:30 Volume: Volume N316AR6 health changed from Redundant to Degraded.
Tue Jul 18 2017 11:52:21 Disk: Disk Model:TOSHIBA DT01ACA300 Serial:242SATMGS was removed from Channel 4 of the head unit(It'd be nice to have a Frontview option to sort the normal way so you can post logs that don't have to be read backwards...)
Both disc lights of the pulled trays were flashing, so I presumed it was syncing both.
Yep
Wed Jul 19 2017 1:38:30 Disk: Disk in channel 4 (Internal) changed state from RESYNC to ONLINE. Wed Jul 19 2017 1:38:27 Disk: Disk in channel 2 (Internal) changed state from RESYNC to ONLINE. Wed Jul 19 2017 1:38:25 Volume: Volume N316AR6 health changed from Degraded to Redundant. Wed Jul 19 2017 1:38:22 Volume: Volume N316AR6 is resynced.
So that took ~13.5 hours.
The previous sequential resync took ~12.5 for the first, plus ~19.5 for the extra parity resync (it has to do more I/O).
So a total of ~32 hours, v's 13.5 as one pass.
I just got my next two 10TB drives, so now I do it for real.
For others, the better way (as long as you don't have a failure)
- refresh backups
- shutdown,
- swap two discs for larger discs
- power up
- cross fingers for ~13 hourse
- enjoy my Humongous storage
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