Expanding My NAS

I have a couple of NAS devices (Network Attached Storage) ie basically a series of hard drives that I use as backup storage and a server for my music and videos. A home cloud if you like.

The oldest is a ReadyNAS Duo V2 which only has two 2TB HHDs and which is limited to 2TB of storage space with each disk effectively being a mirror of the other. This is only used as a backup for my computer files but is is now almost full.

I have ordered a couple of 4Tb HDDs to replace the existing drives. It should be interesting because the redundancy built into these systems means that, in the event of the failure of one drive, then a replacement drive can be fitted and the system will automatically fill it with the necessary data to give the same redundancy as before.

Apparently this is true when a larger drive is inserted, though the capacity is limited to that of the smaller drive. My intention is to replace one drive, leave it for, say, 24 hours to allow it to repair itself then replace the other drive with the second 4TB which should double the capacity.

I have never done this before so I am quite interested to see how/if it works.





BTW this can all be done while the drives are 'hot' ie switched on.

Re: Expanding My NAS

Interesting.

For me, I've never had the need for all that space for files. What I have is in Google Drive and/or stored locally on my phones/tablet/MacBook.

Re: Expanding My NAS

I'm glad you know what you're doing, Bruce

Re: Expanding My NAS

Me too.

Re: Expanding My NAS

There was movement at the station...

The new drives arrived today so I removed one drive from the NAS, removed the 2TB HDD and replaced it with the new 4TB drive.

After putting it back in the NAS it was powered up - after completing its load up check the new drive light kept flashing which I hope means it is being up dated.







I expect when the rebuilding of the new drive finishes the capacity will still only be 2TB (ir the same as the smallest drive) but when the second drive is replaced it should leap to 4TB. We shall see.

Re: Expanding My NAS

I had a look at the ReadyNAS Dashboard and it appears to be doing its 'thing' and resyncing the two drives according to the status:

Re: Expanding My NAS

Resync has finished


Took about 5.5 hours according to the log.

Now for the second disk...

Re: Expanding My NAS

Well it seems to have been a pretty painless exercise expanding this NAS.

When I checked it this morning the second drive had been resynced and after rebooting it showed the additional space with 2.2Tb free instead of the 360Gb with the 2Tb HDDs.

These devices log everything and this is the last few entries showing the reboot and the extra space (not sure if it is readable)