I have the Netgear Ready Nas104, with 8tb of storage (4-2tb drives). It's currently set up as a Raid 5, approxiamtely 6tb of usable storage. I am looking to upgrade the drives, the question is what is the best way to do this? Can I upgrade just 2 drives? Or do I have to do all 4?
You can upgrade just two drives - waiting for the first to complete before installing the second. You install each with the system running (both removal and insertion).
Stay within the hardware compatibility list - otherwise Netgear can/will deny support. I suggest Western Digital Red drives, though of course there are other options.
And if I add 2 bigger drives, the Raid 5 will get larger and work properly? I was looking at adding 2 - 4tb drives. Giving me 2 - 2tb drives and 2-4tb drives. Do you know how much usable storage this will provide me?
And if I add 2 bigger drives, the Raid 5 will get larger and work properly?
You'll end up with two layers - 4x2TB RAID-5 (which is what you have already) and a new 2x2TB RAID-1 layer to use the additional space. When/if you add upgrade a third drive, that new layer will be converted automatically to RAID-5.
You still see a single volume (despite the layering), so this is all invisible to the user.
I was looking at adding 2 - 4tb drives. Giving me 2 - 2tb drives and 2-4tb drives. Do you know how much usable storage this will provide me?
The general rule for the volume size is to drop the largest drive, and sum the rest.
So, in your case 12 TB of raw storage, with an 8 TB volume. That is, 2 TB more storage than you have now. As you likely know, the ReadyNAS reports TiB, so it will say ~7.2 TB
Thank you for all the info. While replacing 2 drives is cheaper, my best move may be to just upgrade/replace all 4 drives.
The ReadyNAS will run quite happily with 2x2TB+2x4TB. You'll see the same volume you have now, just expanded to 8 TB. So the main thing really is price.
Does it matter which 2 drives I remove? I know I have to remove 1, let it rebuild and then remove another drive and let it rebuild, but I'm curious which ones should I remove?
Also, do you have any estimate on how long it will take per drive to rebuild, I have about 4.4tb of data?
It could take quite a while to finish. I've seen posters say it takes 36 hours for 4x4 TB, that would scale to 18 hours for the first drive. My RN102 is set up for jbod, so I have no first-hand info on this.
