Just purchased, quick question

[mdof2]

Greetings.
I just purchased a Asustor AS-204TE 4 Bay NAS.
I've got QTY3 4TB drives, which I'd like to add the 4th drive later.
My question is, can this easily be done once I set up the first 3 with RAID5?
Plug in the 4th 4TB drive and expand the set with the storage manager?

Second Q:
Can I expand the volume with or build the volume with mixed sized drives?
i.e., RAID5, with 4, 4, 4, and 3TB drives.

Second Q pt. 2
Can I later swap the 3tb drive for a 4tb drive without issue?

Thanks!

[clinton.hall]

Yes, yes, and yes.

However, when using mixed drives, the RAID volume size will be based on the smallest drive, and replacing a 3TB with a 4TB etc won't make any difference to volume size until ALL drives have been replaced with larger drives.

So if you use 4,4,4,3 your raid5 would be approx 3x3 TB = 9TB approx. then replace the 3 TB with 4 TB and you will go to 3 x 4 = 12 TB (approx)

I don't know what happens if you started with 4,4,4 (8 TB RAID 5) then add a 3 TB... Never tried this myself... It might not let you.

Personally, for the hassle vs the extra 1TB I wouldn't use 4,4,4,3... I'd just start with 4,4,4 and then add another 4 later.

[mdof2]

Thank you Sir.

[Allen@AST]

Hi mdof2,

You may also want to check out some of our ASUSTOR College documents for further information:

Introduction to RAID
http://download.asustor.com/college/en/ ... o_RAID.pdf


RAID Migration and Capacity Expansion
http://download.asustor.com/college/en/ ... ansion.pdf

[mdof2]

Thank you. I've read them, added my last drive, and syncing now.
Appreciate the help and reference.