Question storage increase options

[chenks]

so i bought my DS1019+ at the end of December 2019, with 5 x 4TB Seagate IronWolf Drives.
set up 1 volume RAID 5 BTRFS giving me total capacity of 14TB (approx).
all great, and i'll never use up all the space.... so i thought.

but as they say, they more space you have the more space you end up using. so i'm already at just over 6TB free.

i'm now thinking of future storage upgrade plans and what options are available to me.
it'll essentially be increasing the available storage of the single volume in the existing DS1019.

i understand that i've used RAID5 instead of SHR i've kinda limited myself to what options i have? is that correct?
would i essentially have to replace every drive to end up with increased storage?

 

[Rusty]

Correct on both questions

 

[chenks]

well i guess that's a grind, but hey-ho.
if i was to remove one of the 4TB drives and replace it with a 6TB drive it would remain at the same overall capacity? and i could keep doing that until all 5 were replaced and the capacity would then increase once the 5th drive was replaced?

 

[Rusty]

if i was to remove one of the 4TB drives and replace it with a 6TB drive it would remain at the same overall capacity

yes

and i could keep doing that until all 5 were replaced and the capacity would then increase once the 5th drive was replaced?

yes, after your use Storage Manager and expand your array

 

[chenks]

some say this method increases the chance of a drive failure during the rebuild, meaning total loss due to 2 drives being down. is this likely?

how long would a rebuild be for each drive replacement?

 

[Rusty]

is this likely?

Well, it depends on how healthy the drives are. Never happened to me even with bigger arrays but then again I had a situation there in the 1st 24h of raid5 setup configuration one drive failed. So, I guess anything can happen but will it be likely, I think not.

how long would a rebuild be for each drive replacement?

considering that DSM7 feature of rebuilding only used space is still not active and around, I would say about 12h+/-, but that's a rough estimate.

 

[chenks]

i was thinking more about this.
i have 1 volume (5 x 4TB drives) BTRFS
1 storage pool (RAID5) 7.TB used 6.25TB free

what if i was to decrease the storage pool to free up one drive, to allow me to create a second storage pool with that 1 drive on SHR? then i could gradually move over the content to the SHR pool and keep decreasing the RAID5 pool and increase the SHR pool until i only have the SHR storage pool left?

or is that not possible in reality?

 

[Rusty]

what if i was to decrease the storage pool to free up one drive

This is not possible unless you destroy the volume and make 2 new ones.

 

[chenks]

ah damn
thought i might be able to descrease the pool just like it could be increased by adding a drive.

 

[Rusty]

ah damn
thought i might be able to descrease the pool just like it could be increased by adding a drive.

You can always add and expand, but not decrease or shrink (also these features are not coming in DSM7 as well). Got confirmation from Syno connection.

 

[chenks]

damn, i'm stuck in a corner then

 

[Rusty]

damn, i'm stuck in a corner then

offload to a separate drive, destroy and start over

 

[chenks]

i don't have any 8TB drives.
plus, does "destroy" mean having to set up DSM, dockers, packages, and all the various config settings?

 

[Rusty]

plus, does "destroy" mean having to set up DSM, dockers, packages, and all the various config settings?

No. Just the volume with data.

 

[chenks]

but all that stuff is the data though?
what would the process be to offload it to, say a 8TB drive, and then put it back on to a new volume without having to do anything other than just copy it back?

 

[Rusty]

DSM will not be touched regarding your setting. Just your pool/volume in the Storage manager is what you need to destroy and recreate fresh.

when you 1st installed your NAS, you installed DSM and then configured the volume. So destroying the volume will not destroy DSM configurations. You might lose some apps that need to be reinstalled (true) but you will not have to completely rebuild your NAS.

 

[chenks]

so i wouldn't lose any DSM settings, but may lose some installed packages?
what about docker? as i run many docker containers, as well as VMs.

 

[Rusty]

so i wouldn't lose any DSM settings, but may lose some installed packages?
what about docker? as i run many docker containers, as well as VMs.

docker and VM will be affected yes considering they keep information on that created volume.

 

[chenks]

so yes it would essentially destroy most of it meaning it would be pretty much a rebuild.

 

[Rusty]

In your case, I would agree, yes.