Upgrade of drives due to low space

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MexicanPeso wrote:

Hi guys, 

I just want to drop into this thread because it is eaxactly what I want to do.  I have 4 4 gig drives right now and want to replace them with 10 gig drives, or at least one right now.  

Obviously 4 TB -> 10 TB.

One consideration is that the data isn't protected by RAID redundancy when you expand the capacity.  Since the expansion process involves reading or writing every sector on every disk, it can uncover any issues with disk health - and that will result in data loss if one of the existing disk fails.  So it is a really good idea to back up your data first.

Another consideration is the total expansion time for the project.  The fastest way to achieve your goal is to 

• document your current configuration (and optionally save your configuration files).
• power down
• replace all the disks (perhaps labeling the 4 TB ones by slot as you remove them)
• power up the NAS (which will then do a factory install)
• Restore the configuration (and check it - some settings aren't migrated when you restore the configuration zip).
• Restore the data from the backup.

Of course your NAS isn't available while you are doing all this.  One additional benefit of this method is that you end up with a clean file system and OS partition - that sometimes can increase performance.

The slower way is to replace each disk one by one:

• Remove disk 1 with the NAS running
• hot-insert the 10 TB replacement
• wait for the NAS to completely resync
• repeat with disk 2, 3, and 4

The NAS remains available during this process, and you don't need to replace all the disks.  Performance will be slower during the resyncing and expansion. If you are using XRAID, the NAS will expand capacity when you replace the second disk.  The overall capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest".

1. 4x4TB -> 12 TB (or ~10.9 TiB)
2. 2x4TB+2x10TB -> 18 TB (~16.3 TiB)
3. 1x4TB+3x10TB -> 24 TB (~21.8 TiB)
4. 4x10TB -> 30 TB (or ~27.2 TiB)

If you want to stop at step 2 for now, then the "slower" method won't take much longer than the full factory install.  But if you are going all the way to step 4, the factory install will be quite a bit faster.

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MexicanPeso wrote:

 

I am guessing I will lose most of my 4 TB availabiltiy at that time as it will need to set aside room for the 10 TB data?

 

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I'm not sure what you mean, but the second expansion method doesn't set aside any space.

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MexicanPeso wrote:

 

Should I get at least 2 10 TB in this scenario to ensure more disk space is available? 

 

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Yes.  You'll need to start with at least two 10 TB drives.

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MexicanPeso wrote:

 

Thanks in advance.  It also looks like I should put it straight into the nas from factory - not preformatting?

 

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Yes.  You shouldn't format the disks. 

It is a good idea to test them in a Windows PC with vendor tools (WD's Lifeguard, or Seagate's Seatools).  If you test them, do the full non-destructive test, and optionally follow up with the destructive "erase" (write zeros) test.  That will take a while with 10 TB drives, but in my opinion is worth the effort.