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Drive Pooling - Horizontally Expanding/Upgrading Single Disk System
I have purchased a ReadyNAS 3138 and a 10TB Ironwolf HDD. I am currently migrating data to it as my original "NAS" was simply a home PC, with Windows Home Server 2011 and StableBit DrivePool installed to house my data.
I would like to horizontally expand (or pool) my data. I have an additional 4TB Ironwolf and 2 more 2TB Ironwolf drives I would like to add to expand my data share/pool.
I'm unsure as to the best way to do this. With Stablebit DrivePool, you just tell the software to "add the hard drive to the pool" and then the software integrates the storage device into the shared pool and evenly spreads the data across all the drives. Does X-RAID do that same thing? Or, would I have to end up spending the $$$ on more 10TB drives? Would adding the drives directly add the space?
Obviously, based on partition table info I would presumably lose 7-10% of the space, given that hard drive capacities are based on pure unformatted available space and lose about that much after they are formatted.....
So, it should expand each time I add 10TB, correct?
No. The capacity rule with multiple disks and single redundancy is "sum the disks and subtract the largest".
So the second disk would create a RAID-1 mirrored array, with no increase of capacity. After that, adding a 10 TB disk would add an additional 10 TB of capacity. 4x10TB would give you a 30 TB volume.
Basically, ultimately, I wanted to max it out at ITS max of 40TB over time.
To be clear, it's actual max capacity is higher than that. The datasheet assumes the maximum compatible disk size that's available at time of publication. There is no known limit for the capacity of the NAS itself.
At the moment, the largest compatible disk size has grown to 16 TB. So the max capacity now is 64 TB raw storage, and a 48 TB volume.
I have purchased a ReadyNAS 3138 and a 10TB Ironwolf HDD. I am currently migrating data to it as my original "NAS" was simply a home PC, with Windows Home Server 2011 and StableBit DrivePool installed to house my data.
I would like to horizontally expand (or pool) my data. I have an additional 4TB Ironwolf and 2 more 2TB Ironwolf drives I would like to add to expand my data share/pool.
With XRAID you need to start with the smallest drives first (installing the 2 TB drives, adding the 4 TB drive, and then the 10 TB drive).
The capacity rule is "sum the drives and subtract the largest" - it is impossible to do better than that with single redundancy. So you will end up with an 8 TB volume size, and wasting 6 TB of space.
If you don't care about redundancy, you could switch to XRAID, and get an 18 TB volume. But when any disk fails, you will lose the entire volume.
A better strategy is to get a second 10 TB drive, and then perhaps create a second volume with your smaller drives.
Re: Drive Pooling - Horizontally Expanding/Upgrading Single Disk System
So, it should expand each time I add 10TB, correct? Given the price of HDDs, it may be a month or 2 before I can expand again. Basically, ultimately, I wanted to max it out at ITS max of 40TB over time.
I guess the other question would be - the specs say it supports a "Total Solution Capacity" @ 40TB. Is that 40 raw or 40 AFTER a format/span/parity striping?
So, it should expand each time I add 10TB, correct?
No. The capacity rule with multiple disks and single redundancy is "sum the disks and subtract the largest".
So the second disk would create a RAID-1 mirrored array, with no increase of capacity. After that, adding a 10 TB disk would add an additional 10 TB of capacity. 4x10TB would give you a 30 TB volume.
Basically, ultimately, I wanted to max it out at ITS max of 40TB over time.
To be clear, it's actual max capacity is higher than that. The datasheet assumes the maximum compatible disk size that's available at time of publication. There is no known limit for the capacity of the NAS itself.
At the moment, the largest compatible disk size has grown to 16 TB. So the max capacity now is 64 TB raw storage, and a 48 TB volume.
