I have RN316 with 5 x 4TB disks, X-RAID. I wish to change these for 3 x 12TB from the supported list. Which method is best / quickest. I have the NAS connected to a UPS. A. Remove all the existing disks, insert 3 x 12TB giving 24TB raid 5 and restore the data.
If i insert 12TB resync, insert another, resync, is there a way to downsize back to 3 disks?
I have RN316 with 5 x 4TB disks, X-RAID. I wish to change these for 3 x 12TB from the supported list.
No particular reason to use the compatibility list. It's not up to date. Any NAS-purposed disk (e.g., Seagate Ironwolf or WD Red Plus) or enterprise class disk will work.
Remove all the existing disks, insert 3 x 12TB giving 24TB raid 5 and restore the data. All other options require use of linux commands to shrink the array from 5 disks to 3.
But if the 4TB disks are healthy, I'd just get two 12 TB drives and expand the array to 2x12TB+3x4TB. That would also give you a 24 TB volume, and would cost less. The process there is to just hot-swap one of the 4 TB drives, wait for resync, and then hot-swap a second one.
Shrinking the volume gets much more complicated if you have drives of different sizes, and thus multiple volumes. Not recommended unless you have a fair amount of Linux experience.
Just swapping out 2 drives for larger ones now doesn't prevent future expansion, you'll just be replacing instead of adding a drive. But with drives that old, your idea of starting with all fresh drives is a sound one.
