Raid 1 with a single drive

[jglazer63]

Is it possible to create a volume with 1 drive, then add another drive later for RAID 1 without reformatting the original drive?  It is 10TB so backing it up would be painful.

Thanks!

[Sandshark]

Yes, that's actually what the NAS does when you create a "JBOD" of one drive -- it's a RAID1 missing a drive.  Netgear doesn't call it "RAID" because there is no redundancy, but that's what it is "under the hood".  In fact, you have to do something special if you don't want the second added drive to be added as RAID redundancy (you want added storage, instead).

Note that you really need backup, especially before you have RAID redundancy.  But even when you add redundancy, RAID itself cannot protect you from all possible data loss.  If the NAS is already true backup (there is another copy of everything somewhere else), then it's less important.

There is an old IT saying:  "If you only have one copy of something, you must not think it's important."

[jglazer63]

So I can create a JBOD volume with a missing second drive then install the second drive later?

[StephenB]

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@jglazer63 wrote:

So I can create a JBOD volume with a missing second drive then install the second drive later?

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Yes.  

You create the volume as jbod now, and then you can add a second drive to the volume for redundancy later on (which will give you RAID-1).