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Switching ReadyNAS RN628X from Single to Dual Redundancy
I’m an aspirant, not a guru. I want to increase the volume of a ReadyNAS RN628X from single to dual redundancy. The five hard drives currently installed have the following capacities: 1x500GB, 1x1TB, 3x8TB. The mdstat.log shows that the volume consists of 5 arrays (each with a RAID5 level) in the following approximate Used Dev Sizes: primary 500 GB, secondary 500GB, 1TB, 2TB, and 4TB. I plan to add a second 500GB drive and a fourth 8TB drive for a total of seven drives for the time being.
Questions:
1. To reshape eventually all 5 arrays to RAID6, does it matter whether the sixth drive added is the 500GB or 8TB one followed by the other as the seventh drive?
2. Does the switch from single to dual redundancy occur automatically in a 6+ bay NAS upon addition of the seventh disk, or at some point do I have to switch manually from X-RAID2 to Flex-RAID to switch from single to dual redundancy then switch back to X-RAID2?
1. To reshape eventually all 5 arrays to RAID6, does it matter whether the sixth drive added is the 500GB or 8TB one followed by the other as the seventh drive?
What matters is that the four largest drives be 8 TB. Personally I wouldn't bother with adding 500 GB to this volume - I'd rather keep an empty slot for future use.
@coloatty wrote: 2. Does the reshape from RAID5 to RAID6 occur automatically in a 6+ bay NAS upon addition of the seventh disk, or at some point do I have to switch manually from X-RAID2 to Flex-RAID to switch from RAID5 to RAID6 then switch back to X-RAID2?
Although it is supposed to happen automatically, I'd do it manually myself. If it doesn't happen automatically for some reason, then you'd need to destroy the volume to get it back to dual redundancy.
1. To reshape eventually all 5 arrays to RAID6, does it matter whether the sixth drive added is the 500GB or 8TB one followed by the other as the seventh drive?
What matters is that the four largest drives be 8 TB. Personally I wouldn't bother with adding 500 GB to this volume - I'd rather keep an empty slot for future use.
@coloatty wrote: 2. Does the reshape from RAID5 to RAID6 occur automatically in a 6+ bay NAS upon addition of the seventh disk, or at some point do I have to switch manually from X-RAID2 to Flex-RAID to switch from RAID5 to RAID6 then switch back to X-RAID2?
Although it is supposed to happen automatically, I'd do it manually myself. If it doesn't happen automatically for some reason, then you'd need to destroy the volume to get it back to dual redundancy.
Re: Switching ReadyNAS RN628X from Single to Dual Redundancy
With mixed disk capacities already you might not be able to switch to RAID-6 without destroying the volume. Obviously all the RAID layers need to be RAID-6
Re: Switching ReadyNAS RN628X from Single to Dual Redundancy
Tried to add a sixth then seventh drive to see if the RAID would change automatically in the eight-bay NAS. After the sixth drive was added, primary array (md127 and /dev/md/data-0) was at raid6 level with the secondary arrays at raid5 level. About half way through the resync with seven drives showed about half a day left to complete the volume resync. When I woke the next morning, resync was at 75% but seemed stalled at approximately 164 hours to complete the resync. Maybe I should have been patient at that point, but I did a factory default, destroyed the volume, and restarted with at least four big drives in RAID6, which completed as expected. When I first started the process, I was waiting for a fourth big drive to be delivered. Learned much more about RAID in the ReadyNAS than I knew before starting even though I've had an Ultra 6 Plus for seven years. Thank you for three answers from people who are very high on my list of forum members to follow.
