novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Hi all, I'm very much a novice when it comes to this machine (I just have put in drives and used it) and I'm having a problem, really hope someone can help.
I've just added a WD 6TB drive to my last open slot (4 bay unit) and, after almost 2 days, I got the message in the website log: "volume expansion failed".
The model name I can find is "ReadyNAS NV+ v2" and "RND4000v2", it's configured as X-RAID2 and it's running firmware RAIDiator 5.3.11
The drives in the ReadyNAS are (in order of adding, they were added one by one):
1) Western Digital WDC WD30EFRX-68AX9N0 2794 GB
2) Seagate ST4000VN000-1H4168 3726 GB
3) Seagate ST4000VN000-1H4168 3726 GB
4) Western Digital WDC WD60EFRX-68L0BN1 5589 GB (this is the drive that led to "volume expansion failed")
Not sure what to do at this point, can anyone help? (I've read many posts in this forum on the issue, but they're mostly beyond my understanding). Without the new drive, the ReadyNAS is completely full, and I could sure use some more space!
Thanks very much in advance for any help.
Chas
Model: ReadyNASRND4000v2|ReadyNAS NV+ v2 Chassis only
You are running your NAS system with different size HDDs in X-RAID2. You are losing right now 2 TB of space. Should change the X- RAID to flex RAID. But to do this, you need to save your data external and do a Factory Reset. ( By change the RAID the data will be lost)
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
There is no technical reason why the 6 TB drive won't work - Netgear essentially never updates the HCL for end-of-life NAS. There is at least one other v2 user who reported here that he success with this drive.
As far as XRAID expansion goes, on the v2 it does support mismatched drive sizes. The original 3 TB + 2x4TB configuration would not have wasted any space. Adding a 6 TB drive to the mix will result in 2 TB of wasted space, but it should have expanded from 7 TB to 11 TB (10 TiB would be shown on the dashboard).
Ok, so as I understand your reply (thanks for the links):
1) I can't use the 6TB WD Red drive in my ReadyNAS because
a) my ReadyNAS can use 4TB drives max
b) my ReadyNAS is already close to 12TB (it already has 10TB)
2) I can gain an extra 2TB by changing from X-RAID2 to flex RAID. Could you point me to a way to do this, please? (I'm such a novice that I don't even know how to do a factory reset!). Does Flex RAID offer all of the benefits that X-RAID2 does? (for me, it's using different sized drives will full redundancy). I have an 8TB drive on order that I was going to use as an archive drive, so I can safely offload all the data from my NAS to do a factory reset.
That's very helpful info (and I suspected as such, given that specs are often set long before new tech, like 6TB drives, exist).
The volume size I'm seeing now is 6.3TB (the 6TB drive is in, but of course not being used).
I have an 8TB drive coming in (it was going to be an archive drive). With it, I can offload all of the data on my ReadyNAS to start from scratch. Is there a way I can use all the 4 drives I have (3TB, 2 x 4TB and 6TB), avoid any wasted space and keep redundancy? If the 2TB of wasted space is inevitable, I'll just get a 4TB drive instead.
Ok, so as I understand your reply (thanks for the links):
1) I can't use the 6TB WD Red drive in my ReadyNAS because
a) my ReadyNAS can use 4TB drives max
b) my ReadyNAS is already close to 12TB (it already has 10TB)
2) I can gain an extra 2TB by changing from X-RAID2 to flex RAID. Could you point me to a way to do this, please? (I'm such a novice that I don't even know how to do a factory reset!). Does Flex RAID offer all of the benefits that X-RAID2 does? (for me, it's using different sized drives will full redundancy). I have an 8TB drive on order that I was going to use as an archive drive, so I can safely offload all the data from my NAS to do a factory reset.
Well he said both (a) and (b) but both are incorrect. The 12 TB ceiling he quotes is assuming RAID-5/xraid with 4x4TB installed. It is just a consequence of the 4 TB max size on the HCL. The actual volume size ceiling on the v2 NAS is 16 TiB.
If you want full redundancy, you either need a second 6 TB drive or you need to waste 2 TB. There's no way to get both (flexraid won't get you there).
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
So if I am understanding correctly, I've got two choices here:
1) I pull one small drive (the 3TB seems logical), get a second 6TB drive and put the two 6TB drives in? Leaving me with 2 x 4TB and 2 x 6TB
2) I get a 4TB drive and fill the last slot with that (leaving me with 1 x 3TB and 3 x 4TB).
Choice 2 is the cheapest solution (assuming I can get Amazon to take the 6TB drive back).
As an aside, given that the 6TB drive should have worked (even though I'd waste 2TB), how come I had a "volume expansion fail"? (which has turned out to be a good thing, now that I know that I would have been wasting 2TB!).
So if I am understanding correctly, I've got two choices here:
1) I pull one small drive (the 3TB seems logical), get a second 6TB drive and put the two 6TB drives in? Leaving me with 2 x 4TB and 2 x 6TB
That should work, and you'd end up near the max capacity for XRAID (14 TB volume size). But if you want do this, I'd make a backup first, and do a factory reset with all drives in place. Then you'd rebuild the configuration and restore the data from the backup.
2) I get a 4TB drive and fill the last slot with that (leaving me with 1 x 3TB and 3 x 4TB).
That should also work, and give you an 11 TB volume size. Though I'd wait for the 8 TB drive to arrive, and make a backup before actually doing it. There is a chance here too that you will need a reset (depending on exactly where you ended up with the failed volume expansion).
Also, don't remove the 6 TB drive until you get the replacement. We don't know at this point if the expansion totally failed - it is possible that the drive is in the array.
In your case there were two RAID layers on your exising disks (a 3x3TB layer RAID-5 layer and a 4x2TB RAID-1 layer). These are transparently merged into a single volume. The expansion required creating a 3 TB and a 1 TB partition on the 6 TB drive. The 3 TB partition needed to be added the RAID-5 layer. The 1 TB partition needed to be added to the RAID-1 layer (also requiring the RAID-1 layer to be converted to RAID-5). One of those steps might have succeeded. If one did succeed, than removing the drive would destroy the redundancy.
As an aside, given that the 6TB drive should have worked (even though I'd waste 2TB), how come I had a "volume expansion fail"? (which has turned out to be a good thing, now that I know that I would have been wasting 2TB!).
Hopefully someone from Netgear will offer to analyze the logs. That is the most direct path to figuring out what happened.
Can you provide a little more information in the meantime? (a) what volume size is the NAS actually reporting? (b) What is the volume status? "redundant", "degraded", or something else?
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Great answer, I really appreciate the in-depth info.
I think I'll go with getting a 4TB drive and sending the 6TB drive back. I'll back everything up on the 8TB drive before pulling the 6TB (thanks for that tip). Phew, this is a lot of data-moving! 🙂
You asked:
"Can you provide a little more information in the meantime? (a) what volume size is the NAS actually reporting?"
A: Right now the NAS is reporting a volume of 6.3TB, which I believe is what it was reporting before I put in the 6TB drive.
"(b) What is the volume status? "redundant", "degraded", or something else?"
A: The volume status is "redundant". While there is a lit indicator on the NAS itself that shows it knows the 6TB drive is in there, the graphic in the status web page does not indicate it acknowledges the 6TB drive:
Under the "Info" tab on the web status page, I have this:
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Ah, I didn't know that completely full was a bad idea. I can take a terabyte or so off (got room on a few USB drives), would that be a good idea?
Thanks for the reassurance. I'll back up the NAS to the 8TB drive as soon as it arrives, order a replacment WD Red 4TB drive, and then pull the 6TB drive and return it.
When I pull the 6TB drive, should I do it with the NAS shut off? And do you think it's involved in the RAID now, or will pulling it have no effect? I'm just trying to build a decision tree now so I don't need to come back here and ask tons more questions if things don't go smoothy 🙂
Makes me feel a lot better, I really appreciate all the help!
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Hi Stephen,
I've received my 8TB drive and USB 3 box, and am ready to back up my NAS. I'm curious what you might recommend as the best proceedure to back up this 6.3TB of data
1) use a sync program on my PC to back up the two shares on the NAS to the USB 3 drive attached to the PC
2) plug the USB 3 box into the NAS and back up using the backup capabiity of the built-in NAS software? (I'm guessing that my version of ReadyNAS only has USB 2).
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Your NAS does have USB 3 ports on the rear (USB 2 on the front). Smallnetbuilder measured about 50 MB/sec backup speed to the USB 3.0 port (with an NTFS formatted drive). If that's correct, your backup would take about 36 hours.
If you have gigabit ethernet, you can get somewhat faster speeds - the sequential read speed of your v2 is ~80 MB/sec. Some sync programs (for instance teracopy) will verify, which will slow things down, but might be worth doing.
If you can leave the PC up the full time (and have gigabit), then I'd probably copy over the network. But either way is reasonable.
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Another great answer, thanks!
I can leave the PC online for the entire time needed, and will copy via ethernet (though I didn't know my NAS had USB 3, colour me surprised. Nice one, Netgear 🙂
Do you recommend teracopy to do the copy? I'd definitely be wanting to verify, as I might have to wipe the NAS after copy (as you mentioned). I had someone recommend "synctoy", but it's very simple (can't schedule it, and it doesn't verify).
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
I've used both teracopy and robocopy for this. Robocopy is definitely slower (but is very robust and is reasonable for incremental backup).
For a one-time full backup, teracopy is a good choice. It will offer to replace the built-in windows copy - I suggest not letting it do that. If it does it silently, there should be a preference to turn it off.
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Great, thanks again. I have downloaded teracopy and it's counting files now 🙂
Do you know what I need to click to set it to verify the copies? I've read their decriptive site, and read a couple of reviews, but none yet have mentioned verification.
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
oops, missed that one! This is what happens with a Mac guy of 25 years experience puts a PC on his desktop as well (old reflexes and knowledge can sometimes lead me astray 🙂
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Well, that took a while! What with waiting for drives to arrive and all the copying, phew.
I successfully copied all of the files off the NAS onto an 8TB drive (connected via USB to my desktops). fyi: before doing that, I deleted about 500GB from the NAS, so total copied was just under 6TB (I did this because you pointed out to me that an entirely full NAS was a bad idea).
I then pulled the 6TB drive from the NAS while it was still on, and got an alert about disk failure and disk removal.
I inserted a new 4TB drive (a Seagate NAS specific drive) and the NAS rebuilt itself.
All seems to be working normally, but I haven't gained any space from adding the 4TB drive, there is still only 500GB free.
I'm confused, I had thought that adding the 4TB drive into the empty 4th slot of the NAS would offer more storage space. When I had only 3 drives in, I had redundancy and certain amout of space. With the 4TB drive, is it that I just have more redundancy, but no more storage space? Seems I just wasted quite a bit of cash (I was happy with having single drive failure redundancy).
Can you offer any insight? Many thanks in advance for any help you can offer (again 🙂
Betreff: novice ReadyNAS user: "volume expansion failed", how to address this problem?
Sorry, a quick question: is there a way to save all of the settings I've got so that, after I factory reset, I can load those settings and have all my shares/permissions/security/Services back up and running the way they were before the reset?
I've clicked around in the web interface, and I haven't found a way to save all my settings.
