Tutorial: Readynas duo V2 using 12TB 14TB or 16TB drives

[nightfly44]

I thought it time to update my information on tutorials on using 'unapproved' large hard drives in the V2. I have installed pairs of Western Digital 12TB and 14TB drives, as well as using Toshiba 16TB drives, using the same tutorial procedure as described with 8TB drives, here:  Tutorial for using 8TB drives in a Readynas duo V2 

All have now been working normally since at least August 2021, when I last installed the Toshiba 16TB drives. All are using Radiator 5.3.13. 

First, again, DO NOT USE THE WIZARD OR OPEN UP THE WEB INTERFACE DURING THIS PROCEDURE!

Just follow it in Raidar, and give it plenty of time to do it's job, these devices work just fine. 

I don't know why, but doing either of those can upset the system somehow and you may wind up being permanently unable to access the web interface, and have to start the whole procedure all over again, and this can take A WEEK! (because of all the installing of smaller discs and then converting to larger ones with all the slow synching necessary). 

I also tried replacing previously 10TB drives with 12's, 14's and 16's, by simply shutting down the NAS, removing the right side drive, turning the NAS back on, waiting for it to show up in Raidar as 'not redundant', and then placing the larger drive in the right side, letting it synch, shutting down, removing the smaller 10TB drive in the left drive bay, turning it on, again getting the 'not redundant' message in Raidar, and then installing the second larger drive into the left drive bay. Raidar will eventually give you the message that it's synching (though this may take A LONG WHILE while it looks like the NAS is just doing nothing), but eventually it will synch up the smaller partition; then once it is again redundant in Raidar, just shut it down, wait a minute or two (though I leave it rest overnight after a full synch), when you start it again, it should expand to the full size of the newer large hard drives. Synching of the 16TB drive took a couple of hours just to synch to the original 500GB drive, then replacing the 'little' 500GB drive with another 16TB one, and synching that 'small' partition to the other large drive took another few hours. Then, getting the system to expand the volume to the full size of the huge drives took 2 DAYS. You're looking at a minimum of about THREE DAYS to do all this; I just start each step going, and leave the NAS alone overnight, then give it a time to 'rest' because of all the continuous disc activity, then go to the next step.  So give your Readynas duo v2 plenty of time to do it's work, and you'll have a nice, fat NAS with plenty of room for your data.