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Forum Discussion
galaxgreta
Mar 29, 2025Aspirant
Volume Expansion question
Hi, I have a Readynas 3200 with OS 6.9.5 HF1 and up until some days ago I have 12 2Tb discs using X-RAID2 with a total of 18,15 TB. I now installed 2 new 6TB discs and though that after rebuild wou...
- Mar 29, 2025
I think StephenB got the math wrong and the volume will expand by 8TB (assuming you've got the standard RAID6). Still, since only bays 1-3 can handle a disk >2TB on a 3200, you might want to consider higher capacity drives. But you will need 4, so you'd have to figure out what to do with the the 6TBs you already bought.
StephenB
Mar 29, 2025Guru - Experienced User
galaxgreta wrote:
Hi,
I have a Readynas 3200 with OS 6.9.5 HF1 and up until some days ago I have 12 2Tb discs using X-RAID2 with a total of 18,15 TB.
I now installed 2 new 6TB discs and though that after rebuild would expand the volume but it doesn't!
My questions is:
1. Should it automatically expand the volume with this new added space?
2. If Not...How many 6 TB disc to I need for it to happened?
You are running RAID-6, so the four largest disks need to be the same size.
After you upgrade two more disks to 6 TB, the volume will expand by 4 TB to 24 TB (~21.8 TiB).
Sandshark
Mar 29, 2025Sensei - Experienced User
I think StephenB got the math wrong and the volume will expand by 8TB (assuming you've got the standard RAID6). Still, since only bays 1-3 can handle a disk >2TB on a 3200, you might want to consider higher capacity drives. But you will need 4, so you'd have to figure out what to do with the the 6TBs you already bought.
- galaxgretaMar 29, 2025Aspirant
Well that sucks that I can only use bays 1-3 for larger discs.
Anyway....Thanks for your replies...both You and @StephenB.
Regards
Andreas
- StephenBMar 29, 2025Guru - Experienced User
Sandshark wrote:
Still, since only bays 1-3 can handle a disk >2TB on a 3200,
I thought the 3200 could handle > 2 TB drives in bays 1-4 ???
- SandsharkMar 30, 2025Sensei - Experienced User
StephenB wrote:
Sandshark wrote:Still, since only bays 1-3 can handle a disk >2TB on a 3200,
I thought the 3200 could handle > 2 TB drives in bays 1-4 ???
Correct. I'm not sure what made me put 1-3. They use a different onboard SATA controller than the other 8.
- SandsharkApr 14, 2025Sensei - Experienced User
Via SSH, you can make a RAID1 out of the additional space on the two 6TB drives and add them to the volume. See How-to-do-incremental-vertical-expansion-in-FlexRAID-mode for some pointers While I state in that post that it should only be done in FlexRAID mode, I've found that it does work in XRAID as well. There are some options in the volume_util command that may make it easier, I've not tried to do so. As best I can tell, adding a third after doing that will make it a RAID5 and actually expand, but adding a 4th will go to RAID6, so no space added.
Your primary RAID level is RAID6 per XRAID rules for chasses with >6 bays. You can switch that to RAID5 and gain another 2TB if you fell safe doing so (so you have a good backup system). See RAID6-to-RAID5-without-volume-re-creation-is-possible. If you do replace all 4 drives, you can use the same process to make that second layer RAID5.
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