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I have a ReadyNAS 314 with 2 x 4TB drives in a RAID 1 configuration.
The 314 has a 16TB capacity limit. I would like to add 2 x 8TB drives as a RAID 1 but don't know if that will be seen to exceed the 16TB limitation. I am hoping that the 2 x 4TB RAID 1 will be seen as 4TB and not 8TB in the capacity limit. If that is the case then adding 2 x 8TB drives in a RAID 1 will see the total capacity as 12TB and not 24TB if all the individual HDDs were added together.
Hope that makes sense and thank you for any replies to my conundrum. I have used the Search function but was unable to find anything resembling my question.
Let's start here. It doesn't have a 16 TB capacity limit.
The original data sheet number came from the largest drive available at the time, which was 4 TB. Today the largest drives on the HCL are 8 TB, so you could get 32 TB jbod if you wanted to stay on the HCL. 10 TB drives likely also work, so you could reach 40 TB jbod.
RAID syncs take longer with bigger drives, so that is a consideration. The array is vulnerable to failure while it is syncing.
I am hoping that the 2 x 4TB RAID 1 will be seen as 4TB and not 8TB in the capacity limit. If that is the case then adding 2 x 8TB drives in a RAID 1 will see the total capacity as 12TB and not 24TB if all the individual HDDs were added together.
You are perhaps confused on volume capacity.
You have two choices here (assuming you want to avoid a factory reset).
(a) You can use XRAID, and simply add in the additional 8 TB drives to the existing volume. If you do that, the total capacity - available storage in the volume - will be 16 TB. The rule for XRAID single redundancy is "sum the drives and subtract the largest".
(b) You can switch to flexraid and then create a second RAID-1 volume with the new 8 TB drives. That would give you a second volume of 8 TB, so you'd have a total capacity of 12 TB. Shares can't span volumes, so you'd to create new shares on the second volume (possibly copying data over trom the old volume via the built-in backup jobs).
(a) gives you the most space, (b) is more robust.
Here's how to tell if you are running xraid already: Look on the volumes tab of the web UI. You'll see an XRAID button on the far right. If there is a green stripe running through the button, then XRAID is enabled. If there is no green stripe you are running flexraid.
Make sure you are in the mode you want before you insert the new drives.
Let's start here. It doesn't have a 16 TB capacity limit.
The original data sheet number came from the largest drive available at the time, which was 4 TB. Today the largest drives on the HCL are 8 TB, so you could get 32 TB jbod if you wanted to stay on the HCL. 10 TB drives likely also work, so you could reach 40 TB jbod.
RAID syncs take longer with bigger drives, so that is a consideration. The array is vulnerable to failure while it is syncing.
I am hoping that the 2 x 4TB RAID 1 will be seen as 4TB and not 8TB in the capacity limit. If that is the case then adding 2 x 8TB drives in a RAID 1 will see the total capacity as 12TB and not 24TB if all the individual HDDs were added together.
You are perhaps confused on volume capacity.
You have two choices here (assuming you want to avoid a factory reset).
(a) You can use XRAID, and simply add in the additional 8 TB drives to the existing volume. If you do that, the total capacity - available storage in the volume - will be 16 TB. The rule for XRAID single redundancy is "sum the drives and subtract the largest".
(b) You can switch to flexraid and then create a second RAID-1 volume with the new 8 TB drives. That would give you a second volume of 8 TB, so you'd have a total capacity of 12 TB. Shares can't span volumes, so you'd to create new shares on the second volume (possibly copying data over trom the old volume via the built-in backup jobs).
(a) gives you the most space, (b) is more robust.
Here's how to tell if you are running xraid already: Look on the volumes tab of the web UI. You'll see an XRAID button on the far right. If there is a green stripe running through the button, then XRAID is enabled. If there is no green stripe you are running flexraid.
Make sure you are in the mode you want before you insert the new drives.
Stephen, Thank You for your reply as it is much appreciated.
Yes, I used the word capacity incorrectly. I have previously setup a number of ReadyNAS NVX that were provided to us with 2 x 1TB WD Black. When I went to increate the size of the drives I was told that they would take a maximum of 3TB HDD (right or wrong this is what I was told). This made some sort of sense as I had a single drive NAS in 2004 (not a Netgear device) that stated it would use a maximum sized 750GB HDD but would actually run with a 1.5TB HDD. A 2TB HDD just would not work and I don't know if it was due to a hardware or software limitation on that NAS. So for that reason I asked my above question and really should have omitted the word capacity. I needed to know if larger HDDs would work and you have supplied me with that answer.
I just had to resync a QNAP NAS with 2 x 2TB HDDs and that took 7 hours so I am aware that the bigger they are the harder that fall (or longer they take). I don't know how long the ReadyNAS takes but I imagine it is substantially faster than the inferior QNAP.
I have previously setup a number of ReadyNAS NVX that were provided to us with 2 x 1TB WD Black. When I went to increate the size of the drives I was told that they would take a maximum of 3TB HDD (right or wrong this is what I was told).
The original v1 ReadyNAS (NV+ v1, Duo v1) do have a 2 TB max disk size, The NVX will take larger disks than 3 TB, but there are constraints on XRAID volume growth - a volume can only only grow 8 TiB from its starting point, and it cannot grow over 16 TiB. Systems with really large disks often run into these constraints.
Ah, even more information. Nice to know about the NVX, THANKS! Your help with this is invaluable. As said previously, it is Much Appreciate Stephen. I would add an appropriate emoticon but the select really sucks. 🙂 LLAP
In the case of 32-bit legacy x86 systems such as the NVX, the 16TB limit is a hard limit for the volume capacity. You can't have a bigger volume than that on the NVX. To use disks larger than 2TB in capacity in the NVX you need to be running 4.2.16 or later (which you should be already anyway as that was released a very long time ago now).
