DX4000: Capacity limits for additional drives?

I have a DX4000 (model WDBLGT0080KBK-00) with 2x2TB drives, and I want to buy two more drives for the two empty bays.

I prefer to add two more drives with more than 2TB each (for example, 2x3TB drives or 2x4TB drives). However, the list of compatible drives (WD Sentinel: Hard Drive Compatibility) seems to suggest that a DX4000 4 TB can only take 2TB drives, not bigger. Is that accurate?

Can I get drives with larger capacity than 2TB for my model (WDBLGT0080KBK-00), which currently has 2x2TB drives in the first two bays?

Thanks for any and all advice.

no i doubt it is not possible, you will lose the extra space greater than 2 TB like the original disks. the raid is expanding only in the range of the smallest Disk.

U can add 2x6TB if you want. If you plan to use all 4 drives as raid 5. Then capacity of your raid 5 will be 6TB. You still 4TB left as your spanning volume. Or you can configure your two new drives as RAID 1, 0, spanning or JBODs.

Thanks a lot for the responses. It sounds like the best option is going to 4x2TB drives, RAID 5, which will give me 6TB.

Is it possible to leave my existing 2x2TB as RAID 1 and configure two new drives 2x2TB as separate RAID 1? Could I do that with 2x3TB or 2x4TB for the new drives?

You have no choice with the DX4000 when it comes to raid configuration. You cannot have two raid 1’s. If you have more than 2 drives it will migrate to raid 5. And since it is impossible to find drives you are stuck where you are.

I’m in a similar situation. My setup has 1.75 TiB of space. I set this up a while ago - I believe it was 2x2TB drives, giving me 2 TB of storage.

I have more than halfway filled these drives - (I only have 855 GB of space free). Trying to plan for the future - so I need to expand. If I am understanding this correctly - to expand I could add 2 x 2TB drives, giving me a total of 6TB total storage?

When I look at the drive options - it looks like this is the only drive available - WDBNSW0020HNC-WESN - and even that does not seem too readily available - and it cost $345/drive (if I could find a place that has it in stock). Is this the only option for me-aside from switching to a new server?

If I were to upgrade and get a new server - I’m wondering about the best way to transition, or suggestions on what you all are doing when this server runs out of room?

since WD has dropped Business products I would look sooner rather than later. A Dell T110 or an HP Microserver. I have zero Dell experience. and the GEN 8 HP experience with server 2012R2 has been terrible. But since mine is more than a year old I cant get firmware updates without a service contract. Maybe that would help.

Anyways, you can get server 2012R2 Essentials software and use storage pools.

Another very affordable solution is the Thecus Windows NAS units. They include a Storage Server Essentials 2012R2 version only available to OEMS. So you can get 2 bay hardware and software for less than the cost of standard Server Essentials

Welcome to the crew of people who invested quite a significant amount of money on the Sentinel DX NAS and related hard disks and who are since months not even able to expand the NAS due to lack of compatible drives.

There are at least two options which you can follow. One is using the RST Intel driver which will make your Sentinel compatible with any HD though with a few drawbacks. I am using this solution on one of my two DX4000 since many months without problems and I have full control on the RAID configuration.

As soon as I will have more time I will try to install W2008 on a single SSD drive as HD1 and then I will create with RST utility a RAID5 on the remaining three drives where I will use 3x4 Tb HD. This way I will not have anymore data and W2008 on the same drives which is one of the main cause of disk failure (due to overheating) and slowness due to continue access to the drives. Please note this operation requires a little bit of skills.

There was another nice solution which is explained in this post:

Best regards

Davide / DTM