G_Rayn:
If you select the option “Switch” it will reformat the two disks but if you select “Migrate” the data on the first disk will remain. Now, I would recommend that you migrate to RAID 1 so when you add the third disk, you will be able to migrate to RAID 5 without having to erase the data on the disks.
@G_Rayn ,
A lot of forum moderators and WD staff are saying this should work, but as other people have said the documentation and procedures for doing this are very poorly documented or non existent. If WD have procedures for doing this, then it would be an excellent idea to share these with the community.
I for one have tried to convert a 2 disk RAID 1 to a 4 disk RAID 5 and followed what little I could find on it and it does not work. I selected the options to “Switch” the RAID mode and it went off and did something for a long time, but ultimately somehow ended up with a 4 disk RAID 1 (as per the output from “cat /proc/mdstat”). I then tried to “Expand” the drives and somehow think the NAS go into a state where it wanted to constantly swap a drive in and out of Bay 1 with no way to disable this.
In the end I was fortunate that I had another NAS that I could back up about 80% of my data to and used this as temporary storage and rebuilt the RAID from scratch. Not everyone who has this sort of device has the luxury of another temporary storage device available, especially when large capacity drives are in the picture.
Subset of other similar threads below :
I have a EX4100, which was originally built with 3 X 3TB WD NAS Red Drives in RAID 5. I have bought an additional 3TB WD NAS Red Drive. With the new HDD installed the interface says that all disk are healthy. But the unit has gone into standby mode and the LED for the new drive is red. Shouldn’t the system just accept the new drive and rebuild the RAID 5 across it? Does the drive have to be formatted or something before it is installed?
I currently have an EX4100 running 4TB x2 in RAID1, and I have filled it to capacity. I would like to add two drives and run in either RAID5 or RAID10, but I can’t seem to find any step by step instructions to do this. From what I can tell, I need to back up the info to another hard drive, install the two new drives and start over, but if there is a different way to do this I would love to hear about it. I’ve tried searching for this, but most of the answers I’ve found are a little too vague …
I have an EX4100 with 4x 2 TB WD Red drives in a RAID-5, which I’m replacing with 4 TB WD Red drives. I’ve swapped the disks one-by-one until the RAID was rebuilt. However, the system still shows Volume_1 as 6 TB usable space (instead of 12 TB). How would I go about expanding “Volume_1” to utilize the full 16 TB of new space (without losing my data)?
PS: Currently running firmware: 2.30.165
I kindly need some advice, about possibly switching my RAID configuration on my EX4100.
Current: I have two 3TB hard drives in RAID1 (Volume 1) and two 5 TB hard drives in JBOD (Volumes 2 and 3). Only 1 out of the two hard JBOD hard drives has any information on it.
Problem: While my home screen shows 5.27TB free, recently when I was trying to add media files to my media folder (which I believe is mapped to the RAID 1 / Volume 1 drives), it said I was out of space. As a result, I have rethou…
I am looking at buying one of these with 2 x 4tb drives or 4 x 2tb drives. I am wondering about scalability. If I go with the recommended RAID5 - where can we go from here? If it turns out that we running out of space with a 4 drive array - how do you upgrade - all at once?
With two drives can we just add another pair the same size? On the face of it this sounds more doable and its also the cheaper option, but please let me know if I am wrong. Thanks
Good day WD Community, this is my first post here, hope it is worth while.
I have asked the WD support this question and the details are below.
Opened 04/16/2017
I have a single RAID 10 volume. Originally 4*2TB drives in RAID 10. I had a drive failure and decided to move to 4TB red drives, and replaced the single failed drive with a 4TB red drive. this worked fine. when the second drive failed (both WD Green drives) I again replaced it with a 4TB red drive I have now replaced all 4 drives wit…
EX4100 with three 4TB drives in RAID5 configuration. If I add a fourth drive, will the RAID rebuild itself across the four drives and bump up from 8TB to 12TB capacity? Expanding the capacity under the same raid level without losing data in the process??
Haven’t been able to find a clear answer to the question. There’s an option in the setup for “Auto Rebuild” when adding or removing a drive which I would assume has to be turned on, but it doesn’t answer the core question of whether adding…
I had 2x6TB disks in a RAID1 with 5.5TB data. Then I bought 2 more disks and now I have 4x6TB disks.
I moved to RAID10 (12TB mirrored).
Then I put the data back on.
Now my WD says 35% available - how is that possible. It should be over 50% in my math.
Any explanations?
thanks.
and I am sure there are probably more.
Here is the thread on my own experience in trying to do this from some time ago :
Newbie Here Asking For Advice Again Please.
I have the EX4100 with 2 x 6tb discs set as raid 1 which is now full.
I have all 6TB of data backed up.
I have just bought 2 more 6TB discs to fill the bay, and will now set to raid 5 to give me 18TB of space.
My question is, will it be quicker to format the two drives already in, add the two new drives, choose raid 5
and then reload all my data?
or just add the two new drives and migrate to raid 5?
I’ve been reading on the forum about the time …
Cheers,
JediNite
