RN102 Increase HDD

[Darwin4Ever]

I have a RN102 with 2 x 2 TB HDD's configured as RAID1. I want to replace the disks with 2 x 4 TB HDD's (without losing data)

Am I correct that the following :

• replace one 2TB disk with a new 4TB
• wait until Rebuild is finished
• replace the second 2TB disk with a new 4TB
• wait until Rebuild is finished

will give me the 2TB RAID1 resized to 4TB (with the data) ?

Is it important which disk is replaced first ?

Did I miss something ? Is this how to proceed ?

Thank you

[Sandshark]

That is the correct procedure.  It does not matter which drive you replace first.  Be aware that the sync after the second drive will be in two stages, one to re-sync the original partitions and another to expand.  Only when the second step completes will you see more space.

And if you have not yet selected drives, I suggest you do your homework.  The Netgear compatibility list is so old it's useless.  But many drives today, including the WD Red (but not Red Plus or Red Pro) are SMR, which can be very problematic in a RAID system, especially with BTRFS.  You want CMR.  The Seagate Ironwolf drives are also CMR, as are enterprise class drives not labeled "archive".

[Darwin4Ever]

Hi, thank you for the reply.

I'm aware of WD RED being SMR now. WD should never having used the name WD RED for the SMR-disks. Created (and creates) a lot of confusion and source of problems for people not knowing the change.

But the two 4TB disks I have are WD RED Plus, so CMR.

So I was correct with the procedure, I assume all can been done hot-swap ?

Thanks

[StephenB]

---

@Darwin4Ever wrote:

So I was correct with the procedure, I assume all can been done hot-swap ?

---

Correct.

Netgear does recommend doing a backup first, as if one of the existing disks fails during the resync you can lose data.

[Darwin4Ever]

The actual configuration being a 2TB RAID1, there are actually two Healthy copies which makes me think I can proceed without backup ? If something goes wrong with the first HDD, I still have the second one.

[StephenB]

---

@Darwin4Ever wrote:

The actual configuration being a 2TB RAID1, there are actually two Healthy copies which makes me think I can proceed without backup ? If something goes wrong with the first HDD, I still have the second one.

---

Keeping the 2 TB drives intact until the procedure completes does give you reasonable fallbacks if something goes wrong.