Does Quad require identical drives?

[psm2000]

   

I already have couple of older Linkstation NAS and they have worked great for last few years.

 

I am seriously thinking of buying Linkstation Quad NAS.  I want to buy the 1TB model which is within my budget but later I want to up the storage by replacing 2 of the drives from 250GB to 1TB. I do not want to replace all of the drives as I do not have any use for the extra drives.

 

So is it possible to have different (JBOD) type of arrangement for Quad? I am thinking of running it in RAID5 configurement if possible. 

 

Thank you in advance. 

 

Sean

[robin]

It's possible to use larger drives, but this voids your warranty.  The simplest way to do it is to put the unit in RAID 5 and replace the drives one at a time, letting the RAID array rebuild after each one.  Use only 7200 or 5400 rpm drives.  In RAID 5, the extra space from the 2 larger drives will not be usable.  Your RAID 5 array will still be only 750 GB, just as it would be with the original drives.  To see the extra space, you'd have to run the Quad in JBOD mode, with no redundancy, or replace all 4 drives with larger ones.

[psm2000]

   

Thank you for your reply. Now I realize that RAID5 will take the smallest drive space.

 

JBOD can be an option as I have other NASes to back up data on. I downloaded the manual but could not find any references to JBOD. Can you please confirm that Quad can run in JBOD mode? 

 

Thanks

[jfkelley]

   

I'm not a hardware guy or a linux guy, but I have what I think is a simple question: I have a TS, model HS-DHTGL/R5 2.14.  It is a 1 GB terastation which I have configured as a RAID 5, giving me 750G of storage, as I understand it.  It came with 4 "250G" (232.80GB) drives.

 

Due to an unsolved churning problem I've been having with the backup system (documented elsewhere) I've already managed to burn out one of the 4 drives.  I expect the others to go fairly soon.  

 

When I went to buy a replacement for the burned-out drive, the guy said "why not just throw a 500GB drive in there for the same price?"

 

I was afraid, so I said no.

 

Question 1a: As I replace these drives in the future, is there any reason I couldn't use 500GB drives [*] instead of 250GB drives?  If I do this, one drive at a time (allowing the system to restore itself each time), once all 4 drives are replaced, will I automatically have a 2TG system?  (This is a follow-on question to the comment in this thread: "To see the extra space...replace all 4 drives with larger ones".)

 

Question 1b: If not, is there something SIMPLE AND LOW-RISK that I can do that will enable me to take advantage of the doubling of available space?

 

Question 2: If I want to be pro-active, is there any reason I can't do something this simple: 

1. Turn off TS

2. Pull one of the healthy drives out and replace it (hopefully with a 500GB drive, depending on the answer to 1 above)

3. Turn on TS and wait a day for it to automatically restore itself

4. Repeat steps 1-3 for the other 3 drives

 

[*] I read something in these forums about a limitation in the Linux kernal that made me think I shouldn't go above 500 GB each.  

[Colin137]

psm2000, it will run in JBOD, but it's not called that in the interface. To run the drives in single disk mode, simply delete the raid array. Also, you MAY be able to run two RAID1 arrays with two 250gb drives mirrored together, and two 1TB drives mirrored together, but there's no way of knowing if that will work since it wasn't designed to work with multiple drive sizes.

[Colin137]

jfkelley, to answer your questions:

 

1a: That should work fine. Keep in mind it is not supported by us, but i have personally seen it work. You won't automatically have a 2TB raid once you replace the drives, it will be running a 1TB raid on 2TB worth of drives. In order to use the extra capacity, delete the RAID array and create a new one.

 

1b: N/A

 

2: The TS will not automatically restore itself. You will need to restructure the array from Disk Management, RAID Configuration. The limitation in the kernal only affects HD-Hx.xTGL/R5, HD-Dx.xTGL/R5, and TS-x.xTGL/R5, since they run a version 2.4 kernal. Your Terastation Live HS-DHx.xTGL/R5 runs a 2.6 Linux kernal, so it is not affected by the limitation.

[RoadRunnr1469]

   

"2: The TS will not automatically restore itself. You will need to restructure the array from Disk Management, RAID Configuration. The limitation in the kernal only affects HD-Hx.xTGL/R5, HD-Dx.xTGL/R5, and TS-x.xTGL/R5, since they run a version 2.4 kernal. Your Terastation Live HS-DHx.xTGL/R5 runs a 2.6 Linux kernal, so it is not affected by the limitation. " 

 

 

so by replacing one drive at a time, then restructuring the array will all my data be lost?

[Colin137]

Not if you replace one drive, restructure, then replace the next, restructure, etc. Deleting the array and creating a new one to get the full capacity WILL delete the data, so make sure you have a backup.