Answer me these questions three... - SoftRAID Volumes

RE: Answer me these questions three...

KaijuJoe66 — Sat, 05 Dec 2020 13:57:22 +0000

@erikmh My experience with softraid is once you set up an array, you cannot change the number of disks. You can replace disks with larger ones (and expand the volume size as stated above) but not add disks. I know adding disks to an array is possible is other RAID implementations like Synology SHR or Drobo but to maintain performance and reliability, softraid does not allow this. If you want to add disks, you need to backup the data, create a new RAID with the number of disks you want, then copy the data onto the new array.

RE: Answer me these questions three...

ErikMH — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 03:08:05 +0000

Excellent, and excellent!

On the last point, it sounds like you’re saying that I could expand my setup (essentially 6 10TB disks) by replacing it with, say 6 14TB disks. Effective, but very expensive!

What I was asking about, though, was adding another 10TB disk or two to the RAID-5 if I need more space later. Would this be possible?

RE: Answer me these questions three...

SoftRAID Support — Fri, 04 Dec 2020 02:39:06 +0000

Correct and yes.

We have an "Expand volume" feature after you replace all the smaller disks with larger ones.

Keep in mind that the ends of disks are much slower than the outer volumes. But it will work fine.

Answer me these questions three...

ErikMH — Thu, 03 Dec 2020 23:27:37 +0000

Hello! Prospective SoftRAID (standard — not lite) purchaser here with three questions.

Background

I’m currently using Just a Bunch of (10) Disks (3TB – 12TB in size; the smaller ones are a few years old; the large ones are less than 24 months old); they’re currently in use along with a few other disks in three enclosures. I’m considering replacing this with six disks (2x 10TB; 4x 12TB) as a RAID 5, probably still distributed amongst all three enclosures.

The questions

Am I right in thinking that I could use 10TB on each of those disks, but that the extra 2TB on four of them could not be part of the RAID 5 volume?
If so, can I create another RAID 5 volume consisting of the 2TB portions of the four 12TB disks?
Regardless of those answers, how expandable is this setup: will I be able to easily add more 10TB disks as I need more space?