Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes - SoftRAID Volumes

RE: Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

dgiffin — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 10:12:07 +0000

Thank you, this has been really helpful.

RE: Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

SoftRAID Support — Sat, 02 Jan 2021 02:35:20 +0000

Technically, RAID 1+0 you can replace all drives also, and expand.

RE: Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

dgiffin — Fri, 01 Jan 2021 18:06:58 +0000

Ok, then to summarise....

1) I can grow a RAID 1 by replacing all the disks with larger (one at a time) and then growing the volumes

2) I can grow a RAID4/5 by doing the same

Any other RAID level I have no growth option - correct?

RE: Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

SoftRAID Support — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 22:09:23 +0000

Sorry, no, because that would require moving all that data around. We do not want to do that, when we do not "own" the enclosures, they are generic. Maybe someday but the level of testing we would have to do to support that is immense, as it is user's data that we are touching. (and users can buy some cruddy hardware!)

RE: Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

dgiffin — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 15:37:14 +0000

Thanks! What about growing RAID 1+0 by adding a pair of additional disks, is that possible?

RE: Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

SoftRAID Support — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 14:00:28 +0000

A volume that has redundancy can be resized larger, if all the disks have been replaced with o=larger ones, yes.

Its the equivalent of making a smaller volume than the max on disks, then resizing it later on.

We do not support Drobo style RAID where all the volume disk partitions are different sizes.

Pre-Sales Questions about Growing RAID Volumes

dgiffin — Thu, 31 Dec 2020 09:18:12 +0000

I have a Drobo 5D which I am looking to migrate away from, I currently have about 3Ti of data on it. I was looking at some of your products and have a couple of questions that I hope you can help me with, I've had the documentation but too be honest aren't entirely sure of the answers….

My data is media files (audio and video) and is basically a media vault - I don’t do any video editing etc. but I can expect slow but steady growth in the data volume I need to store. I was looking at either RAID 1, 1+0 or RAID 5 but I would like to know what options I would have for growth with these - with my Drobo I just replace a disk with a large one and the available storage increases, but with traditional RAID that isn’t quite the case.

With RAID 1 can I simply swap out both of the mirror disks (one at a time) for larger ones and then grow the volume?

With RAID 1+0 can I swap out as with RAID 0? Can I add additional disk to each mirrored stripe and grow that way?

With RAID 5 can I replace all the disks with larger ones and then grow the volume?

Many thanks,

David