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Managing Disks - Certify, Verify, Initialize
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Topic starter
I want to replace a predicted to fail 6TB Seagate drive with a larger capacity drive and resize the RAID 5 Volume. I am using Thunderbay Flex8 with 4 6TB HDD in one volume with Mac OS Sonoma. SoftRAID 7.6.1. One of the disc needs to be replaced. Questions:
1. Can I hot-swap the failing drive?
1a: Does the replacement drive need to be exactly the same make, model, and capacity?
2. Instead of using the 6TB HDD, can I use a larger capacity HDD?
2a: If I replaced 6TB HDD with say a 10TB drive, will it increase the RAID5 Volume, or will I need to replace and rebuild ALL 4, one by one, to increase the size?
Will appreciate any feedback.
Posted : 19/02/2024 3:20 pm
Make sure you are backed up. I recommend you certify the new disk, it will take several days, but ensure your new disk is reliable.
You can indeed hot swap. It can be any drive same size or larger, yes.
However, you do not get any "additional" capacity, as all partitions that make up a RAID volume are the same size.
If you eventually replace all drives with 10TB, then you can "resize" the volume, yes
Posted : 19/02/2024 4:03 pm
...2a: If I replaced 6TB HDD with say a 10TB drive, will it increase the RAID5 Volume, or will I need to replace and rebuild ALL 4, one by one, to increase the size?
Will appreciate any feedback.
Note that the max capacity of a RAID 5 is (n-1) x physical capacity of smallest drive (since, as pointed out, all slices of a RAID are always the same size), so in your case it is still 3 x 6TB, with 4 TB left over.
The 4TB can be used for one or more other volumes (all of which can only be non-RAID, unless you add another 4TB or smaller drive). One caveat to doing so is that any volume using the 4TB space will compete with your RAID 5 volume, so that may be something to consider, if speed is an issue.
This post was modified 2 years ago 2 times by smayer97
Posted : 20/02/2024 7:55 am
@smayer97 I think that is kinda what the support was saying:
However, you do not get any "additional" capacity, as all partitions that make up a RAID volume are the same size.
If you eventually replace all drives with 10TB, then you can "resize" the volume, yes
Once they switch to all 10TB drives, they can resize the volume to get full usage from them (4x10 - 10 = 30TB)
Posted : 20/02/2024 2:51 pm
Topic starter
Thank you all! F/u question:
in the supporting documents of Thunderbay Flex it says to replace drive with the same make, model and capacity. I assume that’s not accurate? But currently have four 6TB Seagate drives and plan to replace the faulty one with a newer Toshiba model. It should not be a problem, correct?
Posted : 21/02/2024 8:32 pm
As long as the Toshiba appears the same size or larger, its no problem. The manual may be cautious, but technically incorrect on that point.
Posted : 21/02/2024 11:24 pm
