R4 Getting Full - How to Expand Size?

  • 529 Views
  • Last Post 13 April 2017
Frazer Waller posted this 13 March 2017

Hello,

Sorry for being a Noob. 

I have an R4 with 4x 1TB drives and set up as RAID 5. The drive is getting full so wondering if I can one by one change the drives to a larger size to increase the overall space?

 

Thanks,

 

Frazer.

Order By: Standard | Latest | Votes
Joe Engledow posted this 13 March 2017

Thanks for contacting Promise. It's certainly possible, but your proposed idea takes a few days of unnecessary work:

  • replacing drive 1
  • rebuilding onto drive 1 (6+ hours)
  • replacing drive 2
  • rebuilding onto drive 2 (6+ hours)
  • ...(repeat until all drives are done)
  • running a data migration (24+ hours)
  • running a partition expansion on the OS (which is outside of our control)

All of the above takes many extra hours of time and effort and may not produce the desired result in all cases.

Promise recommends replacing the drives all at once, creating a new array, creating a new logical drive, and restoring from your last backup.

Frazer Waller posted this 13 March 2017

Hi Joe,

Thanks for getting back so rapidly. I have very basic knowledge of setting up a drive and not sue what you mean. My R4 is used for storing my photos on rather than a back up. 

If I replace a drive starting with number 1 would it automaticly rebuild onto the new drive? Then when all four drives are replaced use the Promise Untiliy to migrate and create the partition?

I'm guessing the easiest but most expensive solution is to buy a new drive, set it up properly to allow easy expansion.

Again aplogise for my lack of knowlege 

 

Farzer

Joe Engledow posted this 13 March 2017

Actually, Frazer, I'm trying to talk you out of it.

We recommend that you use a backup program, such as Time Machine, to backup your photos to another storage system, before expanding or making any changes to your array.

There are many ways in which the procedure you're describing could go wrong; without having a backup, there is a chance you may be putting your work files in jeopardy.

Automatic rebuild is not as simple as replacing drives, unless you're using the official Promise replacement drives. If you're using third party drives from retail, you will need Promise Utility to alter the settings of each drive to read Unconfigured before they can be used in an array. Then you can use Promise Utility to start the rebuild manually.

Walter Dufresne posted this 13 April 2017

Thanks, Frazer and Joe, for writing about this kind of drive replacement, and why it's not a good idea.

 

I have a Pegasus1 R6 with six 1TB drives, configured to RAID 10, and it works well.

It's beautifully backed up to a second Pegasus1 R6 with the same configuration.

Over the years I've replaced two of the drives with Promise 1TB drives, complete with sleds.

 

Now I've got a couple of spare (non-Promise) 4TB drives mounted into the two spare sleds.

Is there a way to use these two 4TB drives (with sleds) to increase capacity on my RAID 10?

Maybe by installing the larger drives onto separate "axles" in the RAID 10?

 

Thanks,

Walter Dufresne

Brooklyn, NY

Search
Categories
Close