Disk Size Upgrade

[SteamedBeagle]

Hello,

I'm a bit new to tinkering with my NAS, hopefully, someone here can help with a newbie question. I have four 4TB Seagate drives in my NAS configured in RAID 5. A while back I had a drive fail and I was able to replace the drive with a new one and the NAS rebuild the RAID array. I was surprised how easy it was to do.

Now, I have a second drive failing and instead of buying another 4TB drive, I ordered an 8TB drive. Can I do the same process to replace the failing 4TB drive with the 8TB? I plan to buy three more 8's so that all four are 8TB, but I want to wait about a month before replacing the other 3 drives.

The instructions for upgrading all 4 drives seem pretty straightforward, but my question is can I start with one drive now, and then replace the others later?

I have a AS3204T NAS.

Thanks!

EDIT *** It won't let me post a reply, (maybe because I'm new) but I decided to get all four new drives and replace them all at the same time. Should I use the procedure shown in the ASUSTOR Manual "3.2 Replacing existing hard drives with larger drives", or backup, then change all the drives at once and then restore?

[Nazar78]

Yes you can replace with a larger drive but the space will not change till you upgrade the rest of the drives and expand the volume.

[snapshot]

Although what Nazar says is completely accurate, the constant RAID rebuilding that will occur as you replace one drive at a time will increase the chances of a drive actually failing. It would be better and quicker to save all your data externally, replace all the drives at the same time then restore your data once the RAID has finished rebuilding.

[SteamedBeagle]

I went ahead and bought four new drives of higher drive capacity. I followed the ASUSTOR instructions "3.2 Replacing existing hard drives with larger drives"

After each drive was replaced the RAID was rebuilt over several hours.
Once all four were done, the Expand Capacity button did not appear and instead, when I expand the details of Volume One it said drive one was Abnormal and it thinks the drive is 3.64TB (It's not, I bought 8TB drives) The other three drives seemed to work flawlessly and show the correct 7.28TB capacity.

I removed drive 1, and reinstered it. It's currently rebuilding the RAID, but it still shows 3.64TB, not 7.28 and still shows ABNORMAL. It wont be done for another 7 hours, but I don't think it's going to work.

any ideas?

[SteamedBeagle]

Update: It's still rebuilding, but the Drive serial number and Model is wrong. It's still showing the old drive model and S/N in the storage manager.

Once it's rebuilt the RAID. Should I try and reboot the NAS, then reinsert the drive? Hopefully, then the NAS will recognize the new drive.

[Nazar78]

Don't remove the drive while the NAS is online else you'll have to rebuild again. Let the build complete, shutdown and maybe try reinsert then power back on see if any changes.

[SteamedBeagle]

I let the rebuild complete. It is still asking me to replace the drive with a larger one, even though I've already done so. I haven't rebooted yet. Do you think if I shut down, remove the drive, re-insert the drive, and then boot up the process will continue? Or perhaps the NAS will correct its detection of the new drive? If so how will I get the Expand Capacity button to show up?

[SteamedBeagle]

Don't remove the drive while the NAS is online else you'll have to rebuild again. Let the build complete, shutdown and maybe try reinsert then power back on see if any changes.

This appears to have worked. The drive is showing up correctly now and the Expand Capacity button appeared. I pressed the button and it's currently expanding and synchronizing. Hopefully, when it's done all will be good.

Thanks for your help!