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Hello, I have 2x6TB + 2x2TB on RN214 X-Raid formatted, yesterday i replaced 2x2TB drives with 2x4TB to expand vertically one by one and wait for resync, after completing the process i have 10.9TiB instead of 12.7TiB according to raid calculator. As i understand expanded data space goes to raid protection or became unused… So what I need to ask is if I backup data and reset the nas (via reset button) and reformat with X-Raid can I have 12.7TiB without wasting space? Thanks in advance.
@Leventh wrote: So what I need to ask is if I backup data and reset the nas (via reset button) and reformat with X-Raid can I have 12.7TiB without wasting space?
I have 2x6TB + 2x2TB on RN214 X-Raid formatted, yesterday i replaced 2x2TB drives with 2x4TB to expand vertically one by one and wait for resync, after completing the process i have 10.9TiB instead of 12.7TiB according to raid calculator.
If you want to avoid this from happening in the future, make sure that when you expand you are upgrading to a drive that is at least as large as the biggest drive already installed. In this specific case, upgrading to 3x6 TB + 2 TB would have expanded to 12.7 TiB.
Before you upgraded the drives, your data volume had two RAID groups
4x2 TB RAID-5
2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives
Note that this means there are two data partitions on the 6 TB drives - a 2 TB one for the RAID-5 group and a 4 TB one for the RAID-1 group. (FWIW, there are smaller partitions for the OS and swap).
These groups are concatenated into one data volume.
After you upgraded you ended up with 3 RAID groups
4x2 TB RAID-5
2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives
2x2 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 4 TB drives.
This allowed the NAS to expand somewhat without needing to reformat the 6 TB drives.
Netgear didn't do this in the past - instead they would just not expand at all if the new drives weren't at least as large as the largest drives already installed.
@Leventh wrote: So what I need to ask is if I backup data and reset the nas (via reset button) and reformat with X-Raid can I have 12.7TiB without wasting space?
I have 2x6TB + 2x2TB on RN214 X-Raid formatted, yesterday i replaced 2x2TB drives with 2x4TB to expand vertically one by one and wait for resync, after completing the process i have 10.9TiB instead of 12.7TiB according to raid calculator.
If you want to avoid this from happening in the future, make sure that when you expand you are upgrading to a drive that is at least as large as the biggest drive already installed. In this specific case, upgrading to 3x6 TB + 2 TB would have expanded to 12.7 TiB.
Before you upgraded the drives, your data volume had two RAID groups
4x2 TB RAID-5
2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives
Note that this means there are two data partitions on the 6 TB drives - a 2 TB one for the RAID-5 group and a 4 TB one for the RAID-1 group. (FWIW, there are smaller partitions for the OS and swap).
These groups are concatenated into one data volume.
After you upgraded you ended up with 3 RAID groups
4x2 TB RAID-5
2x4 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 6 TB drives
2x2 TB RAID-1 to use the "extra" space on the 4 TB drives.
This allowed the NAS to expand somewhat without needing to reformat the 6 TB drives.
Netgear didn't do this in the past - instead they would just not expand at all if the new drives weren't at least as large as the largest drives already installed.
I gave up on using the N300s due to the possibility of compatibility problems.
(Actually they worked but maybe it could have sync issues in future)
So, I bought 2x6TB WD60EFRX, the same model as the other two disks.
(Current config at the moment is still 2x6TB WD60EFRX+2x4TB Tosh. N300) Just in case, I backed up my data but I couldn't decide if I should do vertical expansion or hard reset in the next step for adding those new WD 6TBs, which would be more accurate for re-setup?
Just in case, I backed up my data but I couldn't decide if I should do vertical expansion or hard reset in the next step for adding those new WD 6TBs, which would be more accurate for re-setup?
Either way, backing up your data first is recommended by Netgear (and I agree with them on that).
In this situation you'll need the hard reset in order to get to full capacity. Vertical expansion would get you 14 TB (12.7 TiB), the reset will give you the full 18 TB (16.4 TiB).
