DS920+ Raid Expansion Help

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DS920+ Raid Expansion Help

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Synology DS920+
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Good afternoon all,

First-ever post here so please be gentle.

I currently own a Synology DS920+ (DSM 7.0-41890) which is for personal use, it was running 2x 3TB WD RED drives however due to storage running a little low I decided to buy a further 2x 3TB Seagate IronWolf drives to expand my storage which I figured I could do with absolute ease. Upon entering the drives and turning the NAS back on I'm greeted with the below message:

Capture.JPG

I'm unsure on how to proceed as whilst I'm pretty savvy with most tech things, RAID's and configuring new drives scare me :). I've closed this and gone to the storage pool which shows this information:

Capture2.JPG

It mentions that my pool is raid 1.

My question is how do I proceed from here? All I'm wanting to do if possible is expand the storage of the NAS, however I've tried to do a bit of digging on trusty old Google and the is mention of changing the RAID type from 1 to 5 and vice versa, any help anyone can provide would be more than appreciated!

Thank you in advance!

Dark
 
With RAID 1 you can change the RAID type to 5 by adding one or more drives. That looks to be the 'Change RAID type' button in your first screen shot.

But first, which WD Red have you got? The old CMR technology Red or the new SMR?

Current WD Red 3TB 'SMR' are WD30EFAX​
Old WD Red 3TB 'CMR' is WD30EFRX​

The Ironwolf will be CMR and you should not (must not) mix SMR and CMR drives in the same storage pool.
 
With RAID 1 you can change the RAID type to 5 by adding one or more drives. That looks to be the 'Change RAID type' button in your first screen shot.

But first, which WD Red have you got? The old CMR technology Red or the new SMR?

Current WD Red 3TB 'SMR' are WD30EFAX​
Old WD Red 3TB 'CMR' is WD30EFRX​

The Ironwolf will be CMR and you should not (must not) mix SMR and CMR drives in the same storage pool.
Thank you for the swift reply.

I have WDC WF30EFRX-68EUZN0 drives. So that would mean I have all CMR right?

Capture3.JPG
 
I have WDC WF30EFRX-68EUZN0 drives. So that would mean I have all CMR right?
That's right.

By combining different vendors/drives you'll be getting the lowest performance parameter of the drives you use, even if both are NAS CMR. That's just a note.

Before doing any major work, like changing RAID type, it's highly recommended to make a full backup of the NAS using Hyper Backup.
 
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That's right.

By combining different vendors/drives you'll be getting the lowest performance parameter of the drives you use, even if both are NAS CMR. That's just a note.

Before doing any major work, like changing RAID type, it's highly recommended to make a full backup of the NAS using Hyper Backup.
Oh I did a bit of research on that and nearly everywhere mentioned to use different vendors to prevent drive failure in the future, IE if there is an issue with the brand in question and it could affect all drives of the same brand/model then by having them from different vendors it reduces that slightly. I also found it was quite hard to locate the EFRX drives, they are quite few and far between these days for some reason.

I have everything backed up that's needed.
 
No problem.

So in relation to the expansion issue - is it recommended that I stay with RAID 1 or move to RAID 5?

Further to this, should I change RAID do I have to use both drives as shown below?

Capture4.JPG


Thanks
 
If you stay with RAID 1 then adding more drives won't add any more storage. Using RAID 5 will start to combine the drives storage to be bigger than one drive's size. And no, to migrate from RAID 1 to RAID 5 only requires the addition of one extra drive, but you can add both if you want to.

Apropos of nothing, was there a reason you chose RAID 1 over SHR when setting up the NAS?
 
I had upgraded from a DS216J - which I always thought was SHR however getting the drives today and noticing that they are RAID 1 was a little bit of a surprise for me.

Would there be any benefit in creating a new storage pool/volume with the new drives, making that SHR then migrating over the data from the two existing drives to the new ones? Once that's done then wipe the existing drives and use them for extra storage?

Or just go straight over to RAID 5?
 
Pages from the Knowledgebase which contain information on the different RAID/SHR types and options for migrating between them.
Choose a RAID Type
Change the RAID Type of a Storage Pool

Having moved the storage pool and volume from a DS216j then there is a 16TB maximum size on the volume. Obviously 4x 3TB doesn't hit this limit but if you then moved it to a bigger NAS then this could become an issue.

A new storage pool and volume created in the DS920+ will move this limit to 108TB. You could then also change the file system to Btrfs which some packages require (e.g. ABB, VMM, Snapshots).

A benefit of SHR is that its storage can be increased by swapping out drives for ones of bigger size: you'd have to do this individually until you have a pair of bigger drives and then the extra storage is available. Some of the bigger NAS don't support SHR, this may not be a problem.

It would be possible to create a new SHR pool with the new Ironwolf drives. Then use Control Panel to move the Shared Folders from the current volume (1?) to the new volume (2?). The sticky bit is that packages (not DSM, it is in a partition on all drives) are also installed on a specific volume. You could backup the packages and reinstall on the new volume (set default volume for package installs in Package Center, which is only visible when you have more than one volume).

This point with moving packages is something that is often forgotten when discussing this topic. An alternative way to move them without uninstalling can be done via SSH command line, according to googled instructions ... caveat emptor.
 
Last edited:
Pages from the Knowledgebase which contain information on the different RAID/SHR types and options for migrating between them.
Choose a RAID Type
Change the RAID Type of a Storage Pool

Having moved the storage pool and volume from a DS216j then there is a 16TB maximum size on the volume. Obviously 4x 3TB doesn't hit this limit but if you then moved it to a bigger NAS then this could become an issue.

A new storage pool and volume created in the DS920+ will move this limit to 108TB. You could then also change the file system to Btrfs which some packages require (e.g. ABB, VMM, Snapshots).

A benefit of SHR is that its storage can be increased by swapping out drives for ones of bigger size: you'd have to do this individually until you have a pair of bigger drives and then the extra storage is available. Some of the bigger NAS don't support SHR, this may not be a problem.

It would be possible to create a new SHR pool with the new Ironwolf drives. Then use Control Panel to move the Shared Folders from the current volume (1?) to the new volume (2?). The sticky bit is that packages (not DSM, it is in a partition on all drives) are also installed on a specific volume. You could backup the packages and reinstall on the new volume (set default volume for package installs in Package Center, which is only visible when you have more than one volume).

This point with moving packages is something that is often forgotten when discussing this topic. An alternative way to move them without uninstalling can be done via SSH command line, according to googled instructions ... caveat emptor.
Thank you for all your assistance so far..

My plan of attack is actually to move all my data all 2TB of it onto a spare hard-drive I have laying around and then once I know it's completely backed up I'll delete the original volume 1 and then create a 'new' volume 1 as SHR and then move all the data back onto the NAS from the spare hard drive.

Hopefully, this will negate the issue of the packages you mentioned and allow me to increase my drive size which was my original issue.
 
DSM 7’s Hyper Backup will backup more configuration and packages than DSM 6’s. Check the knowledgebase for both versions for any omissions that may be important for you. But mostly it’s ’yes’ restoring from a full HB vault will negate the package move issue.

In this respect using Hyper Backup is your friend. Don’t just copy stuff to the external drive.

If there are omissions then take a few screenshots as an aide-mémoire
 

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