Author Topic: DriveStation Quad - Drive replacement and questions  (Read 1963 times)

brittonv

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DriveStation Quad - Drive replacement and questions
« on: August 12, 2011, 09:24:54 AM »

I am getting ready to purchase a DriveStation Quad.

 

While 3TB of RAID 5 Space is certainly enough for me for a long time, I wanted to know when the warranty expires and I need to replace Drives:

 

1. Can I use a drive larger then 1 TB one by one.

  • Meaning in 3 years when 10 TB Drives come as prices in a box of Cereal can they be used in my quadstation?
  • Can I replace a single failed 1TB drive with a 3TB drive (using only 1TB of it I know, but can I use a larger disk to replace a smaller one)

2. If I replace all the drives (one at a time, rebuilding along the way) with say 3TB drives can I then extend my RAID to use the entire space (9TB or RAID 5)?

3.  If I can't extend it can I reformat and use the full space of the new larger drives?

4.  Is there a limit on how large the drives can be??


brittonv

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Re: DriveStation Quad - Drive replacement and questions
« Reply #1 on: August 23, 2011, 07:34:01 AM »

Bump


Jotin

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Re: DriveStation Quad - Drive replacement and questions
« Reply #2 on: August 25, 2011, 10:08:55 AM »

Upgrading the drive is not supported by us officially so I am not sure if the unit will even support drives that large. It may be a limitation of the RAID controller on the unit. You definitly cannot just upgrade the drives one by one, you would have to delete the RAID and format the unit if you ever did upgrade the drives.


szimbler

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Re: DriveStation Quad - Drive replacement and questions
« Reply #3 on: December 29, 2011, 09:20:04 AM »

I think it's a shame no one thought tooffer any constructive help here. I've had a 4TB Quad for 2+ years now, and while I thought it would be enough space to last me for ever, I'm now having to delete backups every month to make room on it.

 

One of my drives flipped out last night. I'm rebuilding now using the existing drive and it looks like its working OK, but I'd like to buy a replacement drive and have it here ready. As you suggest, it would be great to buy a 2TB or 3TB drive so that after a couple of years and a couple more failures my 4TB Quad could become a 12TB Quad without me having to buy a new box (which, by the way will necessarily be something more flexible and upgradeable next time).


schievelbein

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Re: DriveStation Quad - Drive replacement and questions
« Reply #4 on: January 11, 2012, 12:00:55 AM »

I do not know about the DriveStation, but I can tell you about the LinkStation Quad.
The LS-Quad CAN NOT be upgraded to anything larger than 2TB drives.
This is because Buffalo is too lazy and too greedy to release a new firmware that supports larger than 2TB drives, even though there is other hardware out there with very similar specifications and chips that support larger drives.  
Buffalo wants you to buy the new PRO series.  There are MANY people just like me that bought the unit NEW along with 3TB external drives to back it up.  So, in my case, they want me to buy 3 external 2tb drives to back up my 8TB (6TB RAID5) unit and switch the drives out one buy one to back up the unit, since they will not support industry standard size 3TB drives and will not support hubs to multiple drives.  Therefore, I cannot have unattended backup using non-NAS methods.....  Welcome to the club un-supported customers.