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RR3312 X-RAID mixed drive horizontal expansion with encryption behavior question
I'm trying to figure out the expected behavior for my ReadyNAS RR3312 (12-bay rackmount) unit. My issue is that it doesn't seem to be utilizing the disk space from larger disks in a mixed-disk configuration, as well as not moving from RAID 5 to RAID 6 in an X-RAID setup. Here's the steps I've taken:
- Booted machine with one 1TB drive and default settings.
- Added second 1TB drive and let it rebuild to RAID 1 with X-RAID.
- Deleted the volume.
- Rebooted the machine.
- Created a new X-RAID volume with encryption on the two 1TB drives. (two drives total so far)
- Expanded the volume with a third 1TB drive. (three drives total. Auto changed to RAID 5, available space as expected)
- Rebooted machine.
- Expanded the volume with a fourth 1TB drive. (four drives total. Still listed as RAID 5, available space as expected)
- Expanded the volume with four (4) 4TB drives. (8 drives total. Still listed as RAID 5, available space based on RAID 5 with 8 1TB drives)
- Expanded the volume with three (3) 1TB drives. (11 drives total. Still listed as RAID 5, available space based on RAID 5 with 11 1TB drives)
Current configuration: 1 volume w/encryption with X-RAID over 11 drives (seven 1TB, four 4TB). Most of the disks were added live. All resyncing is done.
So- two things I expected to happen did not happen: I expected that the X-RAID would utilize the extra 3TB from the 4TB drives (barring that I expected it to use something greater than 1TB of space). Second thing I expected to happen was that the X-RAID would move from RAID 5 to RAID 6.
I haven't been able to figure out is this is just proper behavior or if I'm missing something or if I need to reboot the box or what. Everything else (disk access, provisioning, etc.. working fine). I know you would not normally used mixed drives in a RAID setup, but everything I read on X-RAID was that (if the proper balance) it would use the space on larger drives. Is that incorrect?
There's an old post that says that encrypted XRAID volumes can't use multiple RAID layers - that explains why you aren't getting full use of your 4 TB disks: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/X-RAID-expansion-on-Pro4-with-OS6/m-p/904492/highlight/true#M55316
That doesn't explain why it didn't convert to RAID-6.
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There's an old post that says that encrypted XRAID volumes can't use multiple RAID layers - that explains why you aren't getting full use of your 4 TB disks: https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/X-RAID-expansion-on-Pro4-with-OS6/m-p/904492/highlight/true#M55316
That doesn't explain why it didn't convert to RAID-6.
Great, thanks for digging that up for me! It's tough to know what keywords you need to you use find the right information.
Stolorg wrote:
Great, thanks for digging that up for me! It's tough to know what keywords you need to you use find the right information.
And the forum search doesn't help much. I generally use google search instead (with site:community.netgear.com in the search string).
I remembered that the post existed, which helps.
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