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i have a 4 disc array of 4+4+2+2 and want to replace the 2TB hdd's with 4TB hdd's. the only thing is, the 4TB hdd's i have are taken out of a Synology NAS drive.
can i just replace the 2TB's with the used 4TB's one by one? or do i need to do something with the discs before adding? want to make sure not to corrupt the raid. Or does the readynas format the discs back to factory format automatically?
if i need to prepair the discs, any advice on what do and software to use. They are WD Reds.
can i just replace the 2TB's with the used 4TB's one by one?
Hot swapping the disks into your NAS should work. As you say, do them one at a time (waiting for resync).
You can also zero them in a Windows PC (using lifeguard's erase function), or delete the partitions (with Windows Disk Manager). Both methods unformat the disks, so the NAS will see them as blank. That shouldn't be necessary, but does no harm.
can i just replace the 2TB's with the used 4TB's one by one?
Hot swapping the disks into your NAS should work. As you say, do them one at a time (waiting for resync).
You can also zero them in a Windows PC (using lifeguard's erase function), or delete the partitions (with Windows Disk Manager). Both methods unformat the disks, so the NAS will see them as blank. That shouldn't be necessary, but does no harm.
Would a quick erase (erasing only the first and last million blocks) be sufficient or does it need to be a full erase? Wondering as it would safe me 24 hours. You might know. 😉
However, with the last disc I am getting a failed expansion message. I have restarted the NAS, but not change. Not sure what to do. See attached log.
What was the starting size of the array?
There is an 8 TiB growth limit from the starting size of the volume. You wouldn't have hit that if you started with 4x2TB, but if you'd started with something smaller (say 2x2TB) then you could have hit it.
If you aren't sure, you can download the full log zip file, and then send a private message to the mods ( @JohnCM_S or @Marc_V ) and ask them to analyze. (put the zip into cloud storage - google drive, dropbox, etc, and include a downloadable link in your PM). You send a PM using the envelope icon in the upper right of the forum page. Don't post your log zip publicly.
If that's the issue, unfortunately you'd need to to a factory derault with all disks in place, then reconfigure the NAS and reload the data from your backup.
