Question Expanding Capacity By Adding 2nd Drive

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Question Expanding Capacity By Adding 2nd Drive

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NAS
DS414J
Operating system
  1. Windows
I started out with one 4TB drive in my DS414J and recently had been close to running out of space, so I purchased another drive of the same size with the intent of installing it in the NAS to expand the available capacity from 4TB to 8TB.

When setting up the new drive in Diskstation I chose the "expand storage pool" option, but it ended up installing my new drive as redundant with the Synology hybrid setup and my capacity has stayed the same at 4TB. I don't see a way in the options to wipe the new drive clean and start over. Is it even possible to have two 4TB drives installed without having some sort of redundant system in place? Will I need to install a third drive to be able to actually expand my overall capacity?

Thanks
 
Is it even possible to have two 4TB drives installed without having some sort of redundant system in place?

When you initially set up the NAS, you apparently (maybe unknowingly) chose to create an SHR volume (SHR is the DSM default, unless you select "Custom"). SHR with 2 disks creates a "mirrored" RAID1 volume. Had you instead created a new storage pool with the second disk, you would have had 2 independent 4TB volumes.

To create an expandable multi-disk volume limits you to create a JBOD volume.

Will I need to install a third drive to be able to actually expand my overall capacity?

Yes, unless you start over. There are 2 paths you can go now.
1. Assuming that your existing volume is SHR, adding a 3rd 4TB disk would give you 8TB capacity (similar to RAID5), with one-disk redundancy.
2. Creating a new volume with an additional 4TB disk would give you 8TB total. The existing 4TB volume would have one-disk redundancy, however, the new volume would have no redundancy.

Given these options, option1 appeals more to me as you have one-disk redundancy for the entire 8TB of storage.
 
When you initially set up the NAS, you apparently (maybe unknowingly) chose to create an SHR volume (SHR is the DSM default, unless you select "Custom"). SHR with 2 disks creates a "mirrored" RAID1 volume. Had you instead created a new storage pool with the second disk, you would have had 2 independent 4TB volumes.

To create an expandable multi-disk volume limits you to create a JBOD volume.



Yes, unless you start over. There are 2 paths you can go now.
1. Assuming that your existing volume is SHR, adding a 3rd 4TB disk would give you 8TB capacity (similar to RAID5), with one-disk redundancy.
2. Creating a new volume with an additional 4TB disk would give you 8TB total. The existing 4TB volume would have one-disk redundancy, however, the new volume would have no redundancy.

Given these options, option1 appeals more to me as you have one-disk redundancy for the entire 8TB of storage.

Thanks, I'd like to avoid starting over.

If I were to add two additional 4TB drives to my existing two drives, what is the max capacity? Which RAID setup would give me the maximum capacity?
 
Thanks, I'd like to avoid starting over.

If I were to add two additional 4TB drives to my existing two drives, what is the max capacity? Which RAID setup would give me the maximum capacity?
If you add 2 additional 4TB drives (4 total) to your SHR volume (confirm that this is your volume type, and not RAID1), you will have 12TB nominal capacity total, with one-disk redundancy.
RAID Calculator | Synology Inc.

If you start over you could have 16TB using RAID0, JBOD, or by creating 4 separate Basic volumes (one per disk), with no disk redundancy. For RAID0 and JBOD that means that any disk failure will take out the entire 16TB volume.
 

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