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Hello all, I am a new user of ReadyNAS as of this weekend and so far love it. I have a question about the drives being used and am hoping someone can point me in the right direction.
There are 4 drive bays (A, B, C, D) - from what I read online, (A) is the main data drive, (B) is for data protection? and (C/D) are additional storage bays to expand on (A).
I currently have (2) 1TB drives in (A, B) however they are different models and I already got thrown and error about mismatching drives before having to resync data.
I have a 4TB WD NASware drive sitting in front of me I want to add in before I can afford additional matching drives... since this drive is much larger in capacity, should I put it in (A)? And if so, will I lost everything saved or will it auto-copy over from (B)? Or am I better off putting it in (C) for now to expand storage?
2. Say I decide to purchase additional 4TB drives to match speeds and be the same size, do I hot-swap from (A and B) individually one at a time so data gets copied automatically?
If you want to upgrade the two existing drives, then you do need to hot-swap individually and wait for the resync to complete before you add the next. When you do that, the new drive is rebuilt from the remaining drives.
Though you'll probably want to insert the existing 4 TB drive in C (giving you 2 TB), and the second one in D (giving you 6 TB). Then if you upgrade A you'll end up with 9 TB, and finally upgrading B will give you 12 TB.
There are 4 drive bays (A, B, C, D) - from what I read online, (A) is the main data drive, (B) is for data protection? and (C/D) are additional storage bays to expand on (A).
Not really. There is no such thing as a "main" drive with RAID. Data and Raid recovery blocks are evenly spread across all disks if you have > 2 drives. With two drives (RAID-1) the two drives are mirrored.
The only thing special about the first drive is that the NAS will boot from it. But the OS itself is mirrored on all drives, so if the first drive fails you can still boot up the NAS.
I currently have (2) 1TB drives in (A, B) however they are different models and I already got thrown and error about mismatching drives before having to resync data.
That's not really an error, it's advisory (likely the speeds aren't the same). You can safely ignore it, the only consequence is that the overall speed is limited by the slowest drive.
I have a 4TB WD NASware drive sitting in front of me I want to add in before I can afford additional matching drives... since this drive is much larger in capacity, should I put it in (A)? And if so, will I lost everything saved or will it auto-copy over from (B)?
The problem here is that the RAID can't use all the space on the drive. The capacity rule is "sum the disks and subtract the largest". If you do the math, you'll see that you still end up with the same 1 TB volume you already have.
You have two options
change to flexraid, and add the 4 TB drive as a jbod volume. You'll end up with a 1 TB RAID-1 volume (which you already have) and a 4 TB jbod volume (with no RAID protection). You'll need to create some shares on each. There will be no RAID protection, though you could convert the jbod volume to a 4 TB RAID-1 volume easily. Consolidating back to one volume would be more difficult.
Just add the 4 TB drive to slot C. You'll end up with a single 2 TB volume for now (twice as large as your existing volume) that does have RAID protection. If you add a second 4 TB drive to the system later on in slot D then you'll have a 6 TB volume.
One thing to keep in mind - RAID is useful, but it isn't enough to keep your data safe. So you should invest in a backup plan for your NAS.
That is great info, thank you very much for taking the time to explain it!
I have a few more follow up questions and then I should be all set:
1. If the default "XRAID" is simply mirrored, why when I check volumes does it says I only have 1TB available? Shouldn't I have 2TB?
2. Say I decide to purchase additional 4TB drives to match speeds and be the same size, do I hot-swap from (A and B) individually one at a time so data gets copied automatically?
2. Say I decide to purchase additional 4TB drives to match speeds and be the same size, do I hot-swap from (A and B) individually one at a time so data gets copied automatically?
If you want to upgrade the two existing drives, then you do need to hot-swap individually and wait for the resync to complete before you add the next. When you do that, the new drive is rebuilt from the remaining drives.
Though you'll probably want to insert the existing 4 TB drive in C (giving you 2 TB), and the second one in D (giving you 6 TB). Then if you upgrade A you'll end up with 9 TB, and finally upgrading B will give you 12 TB.
I currently have (2) 1TB drives in (A, B) however they are different models and I already got thrown and error about mismatching drives before having to resync data.
That's not really an error, it's advisory (likely the speeds aren't the same). You can safely ignore it, the only consequence is that the overall speed is limited by the slowest drive.
Not entirely true. It is a warning. But drives with speed mismatches can cause vibration at different frequencies, potentially causing pre-mature failure. This is especially true if using desktop drives without vibration protection and/or if the NAS is mounted on a non-stable surface. And a bigger problem the bigger the NAS. It's a huge deal in a server where there can be 10,000 or 15,000 RPM SAS drives. Some people even avoid mixng in a rack.
But, then, I cannot figure out why, when I was running a bunch of RAID experiments with some older HGST enterprise, 7200RPM drives, that the NAS said the 1TB versions were 5900RPM while the 2TB were 7200TB.
I currently have (2) 1TB drives in (A, B) however they are different models and I already got thrown and error about mismatching drives before having to resync data.
That's not really an error, it's advisory (likely the speeds aren't the same). You can safely ignore it, the only consequence is that the overall speed is limited by the slowest drive.
Not entirely true. It is a warning. But drives with speed mismatches can cause vibration at different frequencies, potentially causing pre-mature failure. This is especially true if using desktop drives without vibration protection and/or if the NAS is mounted on a non-stable surface. And a bigger problem the bigger the NAS.
Well, he has a four-bay NAS with only two drives at present. Personally I ran mixed speeds in my Pro-6 for some years, with no evidence of early failure. I'm still running them in my old Duo (~50K hours on one of the drives).
I'm not seeing any study that confirms (or refutes) the vibration frequency theory. Do you have a source that provides information, or is this more hypothetical - like the theories that drive spindown will increase (or decrease) the life of the drive?
