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In the last few days I took to setting up my newish RN214 with all the drive bays filled, after running for a while with a single 4 TB Seagate drive.
I pulled the 4TB, reformatted it and inserted it back into the 214 along with two identical Seagate IronWold 3 TB drives. Everything seemed to go well,the RN214 formatted the drives and created a RAID 5 XRAID and I got about 5.3TB of storage.
After that, I copied about 300GB of data that I had on an external 4TB drive onto the RAID and that worked well enough. That drive is a Western Digital 4TB Purple-Amazon shipped the wrong one when I ordered 3-3TB IronWorlf's and now its too late to exchange it so I have to use it in the RN214, or at least I hope to.
Today I took that WD PURPLE 4TB drive and insterted it into the 4th slot on the RN214 thinking I was going to add at least a couple of more TB to my RN214 storage after it got reformatted.
Prior to installing it into the RN214 I didn't bother to reformat the WD drive while attached to a computer, because I figured that I could do so using the formating capabilities built into the RAIDAR console.
IWhen I popped it into the RN214, formatted it and the Raid added it, my storage capacity only increased to 6 TB (see attached screenshot). Can anyone tell me what the heck happened?
If my math is right, taking the lowest size for each drive into accoutn, I effectively installed 4x3TB drives and I figured that should give me about 8-9 TB of storage at RAID 5. What am I missing?
One thing that crossed my mind is that because the last drive, the WD 4TB Purple had been formatted as FAT32 and it only showed up at a 2TB when I was using it as an external drive to do some file shuffling, that might have messed things up.
But that shouldn't matter right, because I reformatted it after I popped it into the RN214? Or do I have that part wrong?
If anyone can help me out to solved this puzzle so I can get the extra TBs that I think I should have available I would really appreciate it.
If my math is right, taking the lowest size for each drive into account, I effectively installed 4x3TB drives and I figured that should give me about 8-9 TB of storage at RAID 5. What am I missing?
The capacity rule for XRAID is "sum the disks and subtract the largest". So 3x3TB+4TB should give you a volume size of 9 TB (~8.2 TiB).
Wait for the volume to complete it's syncing, and then let us know whether it's expanded to that size or not. If it hasn't, grab the log zip file, and copy/paste mdstat.log into your reply.
If my math is right, taking the lowest size for each drive into account, I effectively installed 4x3TB drives and I figured that should give me about 8-9 TB of storage at RAID 5. What am I missing?
The capacity rule for XRAID is "sum the disks and subtract the largest". So 3x3TB+4TB should give you a volume size of 9 TB (~8.2 TiB).
Wait for the volume to complete it's syncing, and then let us know whether it's expanded to that size or not. If it hasn't, grab the log zip file, and copy/paste mdstat.log into your reply.
Your are right of course and now that the syncing of the 4th drive has run its course, my 214 server is at what it should be (9.08 TB) which corresponds to my original calculation for the disks I added and my basic understanding of RAID, and your confirmation of course.
I think what threw me off at first was that when I insterted the first three drives to build the raid it immediately showed the capacity at about 6 TB.
In retrospect It now makes sense that the Readynas OS saw all of three drives at once and reported the combined capacity at RAID 5 and that it takes time for the resync and to show the additonal capacity of adding another drive on the fly.
If I am not polluting the thread here, may a couple of follow up questions?
Do you see any postential problem down the line with the mishmash of drives I now ended up with in the ReadyNAS 214? Also I have a question about a dead drive/possible replacement in my older Readynas NV+1?
The RN214 now has 2x3TB Seagate Ironwolfs, 1x4 TB Seagate Barracuda and the 4TD WD Purple Surveilance Drive. I ended up the WD because of an Amazon shipping screw up that I didn't discover in time to return it for an exchange for the one I had ordered (another 3TB Ironwolf).
For me to compare, I've had a Readynas NV +1 for I think 8-9 years with 4x2TB Seagate drives, and although slow by comparison now, it's been a workhorse for storing my photos and other files.
It recentlly started reporting disk errors on one of the drives and now its offline, which prompted me to finally get the 214 setup with the drives that I had ordered and and start to move my files over to it.
Can I just buy the current 2TB Seagate Barracuda model and pop it into the NV+1? I am wondering because of the age of the current drives in the NV+1 and the NV+ itself.
Is it even worth it to spend the money to replace the 4th drive to fully expand and rebuild the RAID if I'm only going to fire up it NV+ once in a while from here on to use as a backup files on the RN214?
Again if these follow up questions on this thread break protocol no worries just let me know I'll repost in a new message to get the answers from you and the community.
Again you've been very helpful in answering my original question.
Best,
geo
PS. Log file for the NV+ is attached it helps evaluate the situation witth the NV+.
Model: RN214D43|ReadyNAS 214 Series 4- Bay (4x 3TB Desktop)
The RN214 now has 2x3TB Seagate Ironwolfs, 1x4 TB Seagate Barracuda and the 4TD WD Purple Surveilance Drive. I ended up the WD because of an Amazon shipping screw up that I didn't discover in time to return it for an exchange for the one I had ordered (another 3TB Ironwolf).
My own systems are mostly using WD Reds, though I do have two small test systems running 2x1TB Ironwolf. Ny NV+ is using ancient WD greens.
Generally I recommend NAS-purposed drives (Ironwolf or Red) or of course Enterprise.
Some of yours aren't, but they are all on the RN214 HCL. So I think you'll be fine. I have seen more issues with Barracuda drives here than the others, but I think most of those were with an older model.
There should be no problem with mix-and-match, though when you mix speeds you will end up with performance that is closer to the slowest drive in the array.
Can I just buy the current 2TB Seagate Barracuda model and pop it into the NV+1? I am wondering because of the age of the current drives in the NV+1 and the NV+ itself.
Is it even worth it to spend the money to replace the 4th drive to fully expand and rebuild the RAID if I'm only going to fire up it NV+ once in a while from here on to use as a backup files on the RN214?
My NV+ is still running (as a secondary backup) and runs on a power schedule. I definitely like the convenience of NAS->NAS backup, and if yours is still is still working it's reasonable to continue to replace drives. I wouldn't invest in repairs though.
