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Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Avram
Aspirant

X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

We run a ReadyNAS 4200 - RN12T1210 (RAIDiator-x86-4.2.31) with 12 of 1TB harddrives drives and we want to proceed with a vertical expansion.

Unfortunately the harddrive compatiblility list is listing only old harddrives that are hard to find.

Can someone please suggest me a 2TB harddrive as a substitute of the ones listed in the compatibility list?

 

Thanks for help.

Avram

Model: ReadyNAS-4200|ReadyNAS 4200
Message 1 of 14

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StephenB
Guru

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility


@Avram wrote:

 

You are saying that I won’t be able to get more than 16 TB per volume. Can I assume that it is not worth it to replace all 1TB 12 harddrives with 2 TB since the system will not recognize more than 16 TB?

 

 


You could do a factory reset with 12x2TB in place.  That will work, and give you the full volume (22 TB with RAID-5, 20 TB with RAID-6).  You won't be able to expand that volume, and since it requires a factory reset, you would need to restore all the data from a backup.

 


@Avram wrote:

 

However, if I can get an extra 7 TB to the existing 9 TB that will be ok for a few more years and the next upgrade will be the unit itself.

 


That is not guaranteed, it depends on the initial size of your volume.  For instance, if you started with 1 TB and then added the remaining disks, then you'd already be at the growth limit of your volume. You'd have to look through the expansion history to figure out where your ceiling is.

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Message 9 of 14

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meshedlibrarian
Aspirant

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Our ReadyNAS 4220 has run Seagate ST33000650NS for years with no issues.

https://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148747

 

~meshed

Message 2 of 14
Avram
Aspirant

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Thanks meshed but yours is a more advanced unit and I don't think 4200 is accepting harddrives larger than 2TB (at least not acordingly with compatibility list).

 

Avram

Message 3 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

The 4200 v1 has a 2 TB drive limit for bays 5-12, but bays 1-4 will accept larger drives.  The 4200 v2 accepts the larger drives in any slot.

 

The HCL for legacy NAS hasn't been updated for years, so it is not a useful guide.  I suggest enterprise-class drives for this unit (since you do want good handling of vibration).  WDC Red Pro or Gold would work well, as would the seagate equivalents.

 

There are two expansion limits with XRAID on OS 4.2 systems

  • a volume cannot expand over 16 TiB in total size.
  • a volume cannot expand more than 8 TiB from its starting size.

 

Message 4 of 14
bedlam1
Prodigy

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Is the 4200 v1 able to upgrade to OS 6?

If so this may offer more flexible options

Message 5 of 14
Sandshark
Sensei

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

The hard drive size limitation on the 4200V1 is a motherboard issue, not an OS one.  You can update the 4200V1 to OS 6, and there are a lot of good reasons to do that, but handling larger drives is not one of them.

Message 6 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility


@Sandshark wrote:

The hard drive size limitation on the 4200V1 is a motherboard issue, not an OS one.  You can update the 4200V1 to OS 6, and there are a lot of good reasons to do that, but handling larger drives is not one of them.


It's true the OS6 won't help with the 2 TB limit on bays 5-12 (which as @Sandshark says is hardware), but it will remove the two limitations I mentioned above.

Message 7 of 14
Avram
Aspirant

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Thank you, guys, for all your replies. Very informative.

 

About updating to OS6 I don't think it is worth the effort.

 

You are saying that I won’t be able to get more than 16 TB per volume. Can I assume that it is not worth it to replace all 1TB 12 harddrives with 2 TB since the system will not recognize more than 16 TB?

However, if I can get an extra 7 TB to the existing 9 TB that will be ok for a few more years and the next upgrade will be the unit itself.

 

Avram

 

Message 8 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility


@Avram wrote:

 

You are saying that I won’t be able to get more than 16 TB per volume. Can I assume that it is not worth it to replace all 1TB 12 harddrives with 2 TB since the system will not recognize more than 16 TB?

 

 


You could do a factory reset with 12x2TB in place.  That will work, and give you the full volume (22 TB with RAID-5, 20 TB with RAID-6).  You won't be able to expand that volume, and since it requires a factory reset, you would need to restore all the data from a backup.

 


@Avram wrote:

 

However, if I can get an extra 7 TB to the existing 9 TB that will be ok for a few more years and the next upgrade will be the unit itself.

 


That is not guaranteed, it depends on the initial size of your volume.  For instance, if you started with 1 TB and then added the remaining disks, then you'd already be at the growth limit of your volume. You'd have to look through the expansion history to figure out where your ceiling is.

Message 9 of 14
Avram
Aspirant

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

 

Hi Stephen

The unit is in its original state. No other updates or repairs have been performed other that the RAIDiator and replacement of 2 failed harddrives since we bought it back in 2011.

 

Avram

Message 10 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

If the initial volume size was 9 TB and you are using XRAID, then you can bring it up to 16 TB without needing a factory reset.

Message 11 of 14
Avram
Aspirant

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Yes that is the case 9TB with X-raid since the begining.

In this case I can start replacing 1 by one the harddrives until I reach the 16 TB limit?

 

Message 12 of 14
StephenB
Guru

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility


@Avram wrote:

Yes that is the case 9TB with X-raid since the begining.

In this case I can start replacing 1 by one the harddrives until I reach the 16 TB limit?

 


Yes.  You hot-swap one drive at a time, waiting for the resync to complete before doing the next.

 

I think you are likely running dual-redundancy (since RAID-6 with 12x1TB would give you a 9 TiB volume size).   If that's the case, then you won't see any expansion until after you hot-swap the fourth drive.  At that point you'd need to do a system reboot to trigger the vertical expansion (which would add 2 TB to the volume size).  Hot-swaps after that will increase the volume by 2 TB per disk.

 

If you are running single redundancy, then you'd see expansion after you hot-swap (and resync) the second drive.  Again, you'll need to do a system reboot at that point in order to trigger the vertical expansion.

 

After the system does vertically expand, the reboot step isn't needed - hot swapping each additional disk will resync and then expand. 

 

 

Message 13 of 14
Avram
Aspirant

Re: X-Raid vertical expansion - harddrive compatibility

Thanks so much for the info Stephen.

 

Avram

Message 14 of 14
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