How to remove excess drives from storage pool and increase capacity?

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How to remove excess drives from storage pool and increase capacity?

I have a 4-bay DS918+ which was originally configured with 2 drives in SHR (1 drive redundancy).

I needed more space, so I added 2 more drives. My goal was to have more storage space, and still to have duplicate drives.

I mistakenly chose to "convert single volume storage pool to multiple volume storage pool" or something of the sort. Sounded like the right thing to do... It wasn't. I ended up with the same storage capacity as before, but now with 3 redundant drives.

Now I can't figure out how to remove the 2 new drives from the storage pool so I can add them back properly.

I am still on DSM 6.2.4.

Can someone help direct me to how to reconfigure the drives so I can add space instead of just adding redundancy?
 
Thanks Rusty.

OK, so let me know if I have the process correct:
  1. Remove one of the new drives from the volume.
  2. Re-add the new drive to the machine, but this time make sure it is its own stand-alone volume.
  3. Use hyper-backup to backup everything from the first volume to the new one.
  4. Delete the original volume
  5. Create a new volume (on the two original disks).
  6. Use hyper-backup to restore the backup to the new volume.
  7. Delete the backup volume
  8. Add the two new drives, this time using "add drives" or something of the sort.
Is this correct?

Also, please note that most of the storage is taken up by Active Backup for Business data. I have seen issues with using Hyper Backup on this data, having to do with the deduplication system... Basically that the data will take up multiple amounts of storage if copied using Hyper Backup. Do you forsee issues here? And if so, do you have a solution for how to back it up without needing an expansion unit and lots more drives?
 
Thanks Rusty.

OK, so let me know if I have the process correct:
  1. Remove one of the new drives from the volume.
  2. Re-add the new drive to the machine, but this time make sure it is its own stand-alone volume.
  3. Use hyper-backup to backup everything from the first volume to the new one.
  4. Delete the original volume
  5. Create a new volume (on the two original disks).
  6. Use hyper-backup to restore the backup to the new volume.
  7. Delete the backup volume
  8. Add the two new drives, this time using "add drives" or something of the sort.
Is this correct?

Also, please note that most of the storage is taken up by Active Backup for Business data. I have seen issues with using Hyper Backup on this data, having to do with the deduplication system... Basically that the data will take up multiple amounts of storage if copied using Hyper Backup. Do you forsee issues here? And if so, do you have a solution for how to back it up without needing an expansion unit and lots more drives?
You cant remove a single drive and then added it back as a separate volume, DSM will detect the missing drive place your array in degraded mode and as soon as you place the disk back it will start to rebuild the array.
 
Synology support says that I just have to put the drive back, allow it to repair, and then it can be expanded under Storage Manager>Volume>Action>Configure, then changing the "Modify allocated size" field. I will try this after the volume finishes its slow parity check repair process.

So it sounds like things will be OK after all without going through an extensive backup/restore process. I will know better after the repair finishes in a few hours.

Here are screenshots of my current situation:
1625260892363.png

1625260916308.png

1625260931948.png

1625260952155.png

1625260974123.png
 
You are in a repair cycle. Let it play out. The capacity table will update when the full repair cycle completes. Do nothing for now (though you should have access to your files now if necessary). When complete, you should have a 10.8 TB volume with one drive redundancy.
 
Synology support says that I just have to put the drive back, allow it to repair, and then it can be expanded under Storage Manager>Volume>Action>Configure, then changing the "Modify allocated size" field. I will try this after the volume finishes its slow parity check repair process.

So it sounds like things will be OK after all without going through an extensive backup/restore process. I will know better after the repair finishes in a few hours.

Here are screenshots of my current situation:
View attachment 3885
View attachment 3886
View attachment 3887
View attachment 3888
View attachment 3889
You should have lead with these screens. Wait for it to finish as It was mentioned
 
The repair finished, and I was able to expand the capacity via the "modify allocated size" as described earlier. So all is well.

I was initially confused because when I first added the drives, I saw that my total capacity remained the same as before. So I assumed that the drives were just acting as additional redundancy. It did say "with protection for 1 drive fault tolerance", but how else could I explain that these newly added drives were part of the storage pool, and were filled to capacity but were not contributing to my total storage space? This is what made me think that I had done it wrong.

Also, I was surprised that I ended up with capacity equal to 3 of my drives, while still having redundancy. I was expecting to have capacity equal to just 2 of my drives, with the two other drives each providing redundancy for the first two. That is why I bought 2 more drives instead of 1. I don't understand how this works, but presumably any one of the 4 drives can die and I will still have my data?

Would anything had worked out differently (with regard to total capacity or degree of fault tolerance) if I went a different route and started with "add a drive" instead of by starting with "convert a single volume storage pool to a multi volume storage pool" and then "expanded" the capacity?

For everybody's reference, my screens now look like this:
1625286345852.png

1625286374882.png

1625286426020.png
 
Look at the Storage Pool page. Here is says that the pool support multiple volumes within this one pool. After adding the extra drives the pool doesn't assume you want to expand the volume you have: you may have wanted to add another volume to this pool.

With multi-volume support enabled you will have to initiate volume expansion yourself.

if you added the drive to the pool that didn't have multi-volume support then the one volume would automatically resize to include the new capacity.
 
With multi-volume support enabled you will have to initiate volume expansion yourself.
Yes... This!

With multi-volume support, Synology does not know what you want to do with the unused Storage Pool capacity. It can be added to the existing volume, or used to create additional volume(s), or both.

In your case, I would keep one volume, expanded to the full capacity of the storage pool.
 
Bump -- having the same problem as the OP. No matter what I try, no choices seem available to me to cause my second 4TB drive to increase storage. I have installed it twice and it "Repairs" to a mirrored Storage Pool that keeps my total capacity the same. How can I cause it to not be allocated to the Storage Pool in that way? My system is one volume, one storage pool, two 4TB drives.
1668447750243.png
 
Last edited:
That's because you have chosen to make an SHR volume with one drive redundancy. In other words your two drives are mirrored. So the capacity you see is correct for two, four terabyte drives.
But how do I choose to do otherwise? I've installed it twice now and I cannot see any choice along the way to choose to increase storage capacity. Is it necessary to create another volume? Can I not elect to keep one volume, but not mirror the drives?
-- post merged: --

For reference, it would seem to have to do with a setting, but modifying the allocated size is faded out for me. See screen cap below:

1668633645259.png
 
Can I not elect to keep one volume, but not mirror the drives?
  • Back up your stuff off-NAS.
  • Delete your volume
  • Create a JBOD volume (both drives are linked for a total combined volume).
Alternately, destroy the pool and create either separate Basic, SHR, or JBOD volumes (using one pool per drive)

Pay close attention to the defaults, or you will end up where you are now.
 

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