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Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

readynas_user99
Aspirant

Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

Hi, I have a ReadyNAS NV, and I've been running X RAID with 4 x 1 TB Disks.    Recently, I've been replacing the disks 1 by 1 with 2 TB disks.    After last night, I finally now have 4 x 2 TB Disks in X RAID configuration.   However, in Frontview, under the Volume Settings, I noticed that ReadyNAS is not taking advantage of the new capacity, and it's still showing that I have capacity of about 3 TB.    I thought ReadyNAS would be smart enough to detect that I now have 4 x 2 TB disks, then the total volume should be expanded to 6 TB instead of 3 TB.

 

I remembered I've done this in the past while upgrading from smaller capacity disks to the 1 TB disks and it worked.    What do I need to do to make get ReadyNAS to recognize the extra capcaity?

 

Thanks.

Message 1 of 10
StephenB
Guru

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

If the volume looks synced, try rebooting it.

 

What firmware are you running?

Message 2 of 10
readynas_user99
Aspirant

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

Reboot seemed to have done something.   I now see in the Volume page of Frontview showing me the right amount of disk space (~2TB) are allocated on each disk,  but the overall capacity of the NAS hasn't changed.   It is still stuck at 3TB, not 6 TB as I was expecting.

 

I then saw this error in the log: "Disk capacity expansion error. resize2fs".   After googling this for a while, this seems to be a known problem with upgrading to 2 TB drives in ReadyNAS:  https://community.netgear.com/t5/Using-your-ReadyNAS/Disk-capacity-expansion-error-resize2fs-Readyna...   

 

Am I now stuck with no option but to initialize my ReadyNAS from scratch?   What a painful process trying to move from 4x1 TB to 4x2 TB.   Had I known this, I would have reconsidered.   I now have spent over $300 on new disk drives, and still not getting the capacity that I wanted.    I've always been a ReadyNAD fan, but this is got to be the biggest disappointment with this this product.

Message 3 of 10
StephenB
Guru

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

Let's first confirm that this is the issue - 

 

Please download the logs from FrontView > Status > Logs > Download All Logs.

 

Look at system.log and search for "block size".  Is it set to 4096?

 

 

Though I get the disappointment, the block size issue was a time bomb in the original 3.x NAS firmware (years before 2 TB drives were on the market).  

Message 4 of 10
readynas_user99
Aspirant

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

In volume.log, I see this line:  

Block size: 4096

 

and in system.log, I see this line:  

system.log:Aug 30 16:58:53 readynas kernel: RAMDISK driver initialized: 16 RAM disks of 16384K size 1024 blocksize

 

and I'm running firmware RAIDiator 4.1.14 [1.00a043] 

 

So, what's my option now?   Thanks very much for looking into this.

Message 5 of 10
StephenB
Guru

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

The block size of 4096 confirms that the volume was created a very long time ago.  Newer volumes would have been created with block sizes of 16384.  That's why it won't expand.

 

It's possible that mdgm can give some manual instructions with ssh - not sure if that can be done (certainly I don't know how to this manually myself).

 

The other option is the factory reset/rebuild the NAS.

 

As I said before, this is all due to the way the very old volume was created (back in the RAIDiator 3.0.x days).

 

 

 

 

Message 6 of 10
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

Do you have a backup?

 

Manual expansion to about 5TB may be possible, however this is a bit less than what you would get by backing up your data, doing a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything) and restoring your data from backup.

Message 7 of 10
readynas_user99
Aspirant

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

 

Thanks.   I ended up doing a factory reset.   It's a long process but looks like it working now.

 

Question:   Since I'm doing a factory default, I decided to use 3 x 2 TB disks instead of the originally planned 4 x 2 TB.   So I now have about 4 TB of storage under X RAID.    If in the future I decide to pop in another 2 TB drive in my ReadyNAS NV,  it should just expand properly into a total of 6 TB of storage, and I shouldn't run into this block size issue anymore, correct?

 

Thanks again for looking into this.

Message 8 of 10
StephenB
Guru

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks


@readynas_user99 wrote:

 

   If in the future I decide to pop in another 2 TB drive in my ReadyNAS NV,  it should just expand properly into a total of 6 TB of storage, and I shouldn't run into this block size issue anymore, correct?

 


Correct.  Your block size is now 16384.  

 

One additional benefit of the reset is that your new volume is 4K aligned (the old one was not).  That will increase your performance a bit (particularly write speed).

 

Message 9 of 10
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired

Re: Volume not expanded after adding higher capacity disks

Another benefit is that since you've done a factory reset expansion is now online. So you would have access to the volume while the expansion is taking place.

Message 10 of 10
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