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Upgrading 516 raid 6 to larger disks

markwoll
Guide

Upgrading 516 raid 6 to larger disks

I have a several years old 516 with 2tb drives in a Raid 6 configuration.

Due to some new video gear I am going to have to archive a lot more data. 4k gobbles disk space.

I am thinking of going to 6 or 8 tb drives.

Back in the dim recesses of my mind I recall that I may not be able to replace each drive ( with rebuilds ) and then expand the volume size like I did with my old NV+ because of the Raid 6.

Can I replace the drives non destructively , or will I have to replace the drives and restore my files to the new larger volume?

I want to maintain a Raid 6 config in the long run for double redundancy.

Model: RN51600|ReadyNAS 516 6-Bay Diskless
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Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Upgrading 516 raid 6 to larger disks

 @markwoll

 

You can replace the drives on your RN516. OS6 does not have volume expansion limitation unlike the legacy units.

 

You can expand by replace your 2TB drives one at a time and let it resync before replacing each drive until all drives are with the same HDD capacity. Building a new volume is another option.

 

HTH

 

 

Regards

 

 

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Marc_V
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Upgrading 516 raid 6 to larger disks

 @markwoll

 

You can replace the drives on your RN516. OS6 does not have volume expansion limitation unlike the legacy units.

 

You can expand by replace your 2TB drives one at a time and let it resync before replacing each drive until all drives are with the same HDD capacity. Building a new volume is another option.

 

HTH

 

 

Regards

 

 

Message 2 of 4
StephenB
Guru

Re: Upgrading 516 raid 6 to larger disks


@markwoll wrote:

 

Back in the dim recesses of my mind I recall that I may not be able to replace each drive ( with rebuilds ) and then expand the volume size like I did with my old NV+ because of the Raid 6.

Can I replace the drives non destructively , or will I have to replace the drives and restore my files to the new larger volume?

 


You'll need to replace 4 disks before you see any expansion.

 

@Marc_V 's procedure assumes you are runnng XRAID.  If you are running FlexRAID you will need to create new RAID groups manually, and concatenate them to the existing volume.  So if you are running FlexRAID, see if you can switch back to FlexRAID first.  Note the way to tell if you are running XRAID is to look at the XRAID control on the volume page.  If you are running XRAID, it will have a green stripe.   If it doesn't, then try clicking the control, and see if it switches.

 

Although expanding one-drive-at-a-time is convenenient, it will also take longer than powering down, inserting all the new drives, rebuilding the NAS, and restoring your data from backup.

Message 3 of 4
markwoll
Guide

Re: Upgrading 516 raid 6 to larger disks

Thanks,

The config is x-raid so I have some flexibility. Time for in-place rebulids is not an issue.

I would rather have the NAS up and running rather than down for any length of time.

Testing the backup is a good time, but not having to use it is ok too.

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