Expand RAID 5 , add disk?

Sorry, that has never been the case with SoftRAID. Some hardware enclosures allow this.

Sorry, that has never been the case with SoftRAID. Some hardware enclosures allow this.

Any plans to implement this in the future?

We are more interested in adding the ability to "connect" two volumes, for replication/snapshot purposes, than converting one RAID level to another.

I think it is much more useful to have a way to instantly backup your data.

It is unlikely we will add any expanding RAID functions in the not far future.

Ok, thank you!

Regards,
Pter

For what it’s worth, Drobo enclosures have this ability (to add drives to expand the RAID size at later points), but man... stay away from that crud! I had two Drobo units and they drove me nuts. Slow, the support sucks, everything is proprietary and secret, tons of issues whenever a OS release comes out (they still dismount randomly on Catalina).

I actually fled Drobo for SoftRAID, and so far I’ve been much much happier.

Just my 2 cents.

We have also heard from users with enclosures with "variable" RAID, and failure rates (data loss incidents) seem to be much higher with such units.

Just remember, RAID is not backup! RAID gives increased data availability, meaning when a drive fails, you can still access your data. But no RAID is "invulnerable" to problems.

I'm in the process of exiting the Drobo system, moving slowly to a SoftRaid environment.  Can't wait to get done with my first data transfer!!  This will take a long time...

Be patient. and all will work out in the long run!