X-Raid vertical expanding

Hello,
I have 2x6TB + 2x2TB on RN214 X-Raid formatted, yesterday i replaced 2x2TB drives with 2x4TB to expand vertically one by one and wait for resync, after completing the process i have 10.9TiB instead of 12.7TiB according to raid calculator.
As i understand expanded data space goes to raid protection or became unused…
So what I need to ask is if I backup data and reset the nas (via reset button) and reformat with X-Raid can I have 12.7TiB without wasting space?
Thanks in advance.

Adding Disks

Installation & Upgrade

StephenB
Oct 24, 2022
Leventh wrote:
So what I need to ask is if I backup data and reset the nas (via reset button) and reformat with X-Raid can I have 12.7TiB without wasting space?

Yes.

Leventh wrote:

I have 2x6TB + 2x2TB on RN214 X-Raid formatted, yesterday i replaced 2x2TB drives with 2x4TB to expand vertically one by one and wait for resync, after completing the process i have 10.9TiB instead of 12.7TiB according to raid calculator.

If you want to avoid this from happening in the future, make sure that when you expand you are upgrading to a drive that is at least as large as the biggest drive already installed. In this specific case, upgrading to 3x6 TB + 2 TB would have expanded to 12.7 TiB.

Before you upgraded the drives, your data volume had two RAID groups

4x2 TB RAID-5

2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives

Note that this means there are two data partitions on the 6 TB drives - a 2 TB one for the RAID-5 group and a 4 TB one for the RAID-1 group. (FWIW, there are smaller partitions for the OS and swap).

These groups are concatenated into one data volume.

After you upgraded you ended up with 3 RAID groups

4x2 TB RAID-5

2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives

2x2 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 4 TB drives.

This allowed the NAS to expand somewhat without needing to reformat the 6 TB drives.

Netgear didn't do this in the past - instead they would just not expand at all if the new drives weren't at least as large as the largest drives already installed.

Anyway, after the reset you will have

4x4 TB RAID-5

2x2 TB RAID-1

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StephenB
Guru
Oct 24, 2022
Leventh wrote:
So what I need to ask is if I backup data and reset the nas (via reset button) and reformat with X-Raid can I have 12.7TiB without wasting space?

Yes.

Leventh wrote:

I have 2x6TB + 2x2TB on RN214 X-Raid formatted, yesterday i replaced 2x2TB drives with 2x4TB to expand vertically one by one and wait for resync, after completing the process i have 10.9TiB instead of 12.7TiB according to raid calculator.

If you want to avoid this from happening in the future, make sure that when you expand you are upgrading to a drive that is at least as large as the biggest drive already installed. In this specific case, upgrading to 3x6 TB + 2 TB would have expanded to 12.7 TiB.

Before you upgraded the drives, your data volume had two RAID groups

4x2 TB RAID-5

2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives

Note that this means there are two data partitions on the 6 TB drives - a 2 TB one for the RAID-5 group and a 4 TB one for the RAID-1 group. (FWIW, there are smaller partitions for the OS and swap).

These groups are concatenated into one data volume.

After you upgraded you ended up with 3 RAID groups

4x2 TB RAID-5

2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives

2x2 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 4 TB drives.

This allowed the NAS to expand somewhat without needing to reformat the 6 TB drives.

Netgear didn't do this in the past - instead they would just not expand at all if the new drives weren't at least as large as the largest drives already installed.

Anyway, after the reset you will have

4x4 TB RAID-5

2x2 TB RAID-1
- Leventh
  Apprentice
  Oct 24, 2022
  StephenB thank you for the detailed explanation.
  Btw. I just realized, I also have macOS time machine backups in it, before reset is there any way to get my Time Machine backups from NAS?
  - StephenB
    Guru
    Oct 24, 2022
    Leventh wrote:
    
    I also have macOS time machine backups in it, before reset is there any way to get my Time Machine backups from NAS?
    
    I'm not a Mac user, and don't know how to do this.
- Leventh
  Apprentice
  Oct 28, 2022
  Dear StephenB
  I gave up on using the N300s due to the possibility of compatibility problems.
  (Actually they worked but maybe it could have sync issues in future)
  
  So, I bought 2x6TB WD60EFRX, the same model as the other two disks.
  (Current config at the moment is still 2x6TB WD60EFRX+2x4TB Tosh. N300)
  Just in case, I backed up my data but I couldn't decide if I should do vertical expansion or hard reset in the next step for adding those new WD 6TBs, which would be more accurate for re-setup?
  Thanks.
  - StephenB
    Guru
    Oct 29, 2022
    Leventh wrote:
    
    Just in case, I backed up my data but I couldn't decide if I should do vertical expansion or hard reset in the next step for adding those new WD 6TBs, which would be more accurate for re-setup?
    
    Either way, backing up your data first is recommended by Netgear (and I agree with them on that).
    
    In this situation you'll need the hard reset in order to get to full capacity. Vertical expansion would get you 14 TB (12.7 TiB), the reset will give you the full 18 TB (16.4 TiB).