JBOD - Adding 3rd drive to a current volume

[alback]

I have an Asustor 204TE, with 4 drives - 2 x 2tb as single volumes and 2 drives JBOD as the 3rd Volume 7tb total. Can I install a 3rd drive at a future date to the JBOD Volume without affecting the data already stored in the jbod volume 3 ?

I realise I lose one of the single volumes if I add a drive.

thanks,
alb

[Auberon2k]

I think I understand what you are asking, you want to possibly replace one of the single volumes with new drive to expand the JBOD volume from 2 to 3 drives. I don't think the JBOD volumes support this, only true RAID volumes. I would suggest you check the Asustor College thing on the main website. there is a topic there about adding/expanding arrays.

[alback]

Thanks for the reply, and pointing me to the College article.

According to the College article on expanding Volumes - Raid only as the data is synchronized one disk at a time. Which means it limits JBOD to original new disks only.

Although if you consider that JBOD spanning across 2 drives is a similar process to a single drive that originally has 2 or more partitions. A partition manager is able to merge the old partitions to become a single larger partition. JBOD is performing a similar operation over 2 or more drives.

A partition manager can do this without data loss, but certainly advised to backup data first. In the same manner couldn't a new drive become part of the original single JBOD 'partition' to include 1 or 2 new drives?

cheers,
alb