so i was wondering if i could start using readynas with already filled disk (now i have 2x4tb drives) or i would need to backup data and format them, and also if it was possible to add a 6tb or 8tb disks in my 4tb system like unraid
also if it was possible to add a 6tb or 8tb disks in my 4tb system like unraid
You can use unequal size disks. You need at least two of the largest size if you want RAID redundancy with no wasted space. However, you can also creat multiple volumes.
The details do depend on what ReadyNAS you have. Can you let us know the model and the firmware it is running?
I'm still not completely clear what you want to do. Any drives you intend to use in a ReadyNAS must be formatted by the ReadyNAS. They have OS, swap, and data partitions; which your drives from another machine are not going to have.
If you are very comfortable with Linux, it may be possible to put drives from another Linux machine into a ReadyNAS with enough free slots and mount them in order to copy data off to the ReadyNAS native-formatted drives. Then, after the data is copied, you could have the NAS re-format the drives and add them to your array.
You should certainly make sure your backup is intact before you do that. How much faster that would be than using a USB3 backup, I can't say. It's certainly a lot more effort.
wait wait from what i understood readynas 6 was an os free to use (on a existing machine) that didnt require to format to expand storage since it used flex raid technologies, from what im reading now its more like unraid
wait wait from what i understood readynas 6 was an os free to use (on a existing machine)
OS6 only runs on ReadyNAS hardware, it is not a general application for linux.
XRAID is layered on top of mdadm and btrfs. There are one or two features on top of them (bit rot recovery, ReadyDR backup), but the rest is just mdadm and btrfs.
