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I had 2 volumes spread across a 4 x 6 TB RAID. Volume 1 was 4 x 5 TB RAID 5, so totaled 15 TB. Volume 2 was 4 x 1 TB RAID 0, so totaled 4 TB. Now I want to delete Volume 2 and expand Volume 1 to its maximum size (18 TB). But, SoftRAID won't let me expand Volume 1 beyond 15 TB.
What I did was first select Volume 2 and delete it. Then I selected Volume 1, right clicked and chose Resize Volume… This dialog says that the volume can only be a maximum of 15 TB.
Screen Shot 2018-01-10 at 15.44.59.jpg is what it looks like if I try to take the remaining 4 x 1 TB and create a new volume. (I.e., SoftRAID thinks that 1 TB is available on each of these disks).
Screen Shot 2018-01-10 at 15.45.17.jpg is what my disks look like. (The other is the hybrid boot disk that comes with my iMac).
Screen Shot 2018-01-10 at 15.45.47.jpg is the dialog if I try to resize the volume (maximum size 15 TB).
Screen Shot 2018-01-10 at 15.46.36.jpg is the section of the user manual that says that I should be able to resize this volume to 18 TB.
What am I doing wrong? I'm on an iMac 5K running High Sierra 10.13.2 and SoftRAID 5.6.3.
Posted : 10/01/2018 7:02 pm
SoftRAID does not move data around with a resize, nor does it "split up" volume partitions. So only the last volume on a disk can be resized, if there is free space after it.
Posted : 11/01/2018 1:26 pm
Topic starter
So, what you are telling me is that this manual entry is wrong: "How large can I make my volume? You can expand a volume to use up all the available space on the disks it is using. The volume is limited only by the available space on the disk with the least amount of space."
When I formatted this RAID, I made two volumes, and since I understood that the first volume was made on the outside (fastest part) of the disk, I first made a RAID-0 as a scratch disk, and then a RAID-5 for storage. The scratch disk was an experiment, and it turned out that I didn't need it.
Again, I think you are saying that
(a) if I had made them in the opposite order (not explained in the manual), then I could have grown the RAID-5, but since I made them in this order I cannot resize the RAID-5 larger
(b) my only option is to erase the RAID, reformat, and restore from a backup. Given that I have about 13 TB of data on it, it would be a multi-day process, which would make my computer mostly unusable (especially because I USE that data daily) for an extended period.
I am very disappointed. I think your manual should be clear about the limitations of SoftRAID, and not let the user back themself into a corner from which they cannot easily extricate themself. (Note, I am not suggesting that you can/should "fix" this issue with SoftRAID, but shouldn't you be clear about limitations of the software?)
Posted : 12/01/2018 1:54 pm
Topic starter
PS -- for whatever reason, I am not getting notification of updates to this thread. I only found out about your response when I visited the forum. It says below "Unsubscribe from this thread" so I assume that I should be getting notifications. The last email I received from this forum was 2016-12-09 when I registered, so I think something is broken. No need to "approve" this post -- but look into it please.
Posted : 12/01/2018 1:57 pm
I will review our documentation on resize. We localize into 7 languages, so making changes takes time. It may not be done before version 6.0 is released.
You do understand the resize limitations, though.
And you should receive forum notifications. I believe most users do. This is the first complaint I have seen about not receiving forum notices.
Posted : 12/01/2018 2:33 pm
Topic starter
Thanks. This time the forum notification did come in. Maybe the others went to my Spam folder and I didn't notice.
Posted : 12/01/2018 11:15 pm
