Disk replication with an external duplicator

[JFMartin]

Greetings!

I am contemplating replacing the 4 8TB disks in my DS916+ (my DX513 expansion has 5 10TB disks) to increase capacity. No discs have any problems, Storage Manager shows all disks as "Healthy". The time involved in using the typical method in the Synology unit is what is giving me pause.

Is it possible to:

• duplicate these disks on an external disk replication device then expand the partition
• use a product like MiniTool to duplicate the disk then expand the partition

I imagine there could be a variety of reasons why this might not work.

Please advise.

J