Help with Expanding/Converting Storage Pool?

saymyusername · October 14, 2022

I currently have my old Windows 10 Pro Machine running as a NAS/Plex Server. I have 2x 3TB drives set up in 2 mirrored volumes (2.5TB for Plex Media, 0.5TB for Documents, Photos, etc). I've set this up in Disk Management (see below for clarity).

I'm running out of space and want to add more drives to increase the overall capacity. I understand that it's possible to create pools of multiple different size drives but I'm not sure where to start. The data isn't that important and is backed up externally regularly, but I'd still like to keep some redundancy in my pool. Say I want to add another 1 or 2 drives, and allow 1 drive of the 3 or 4 to fail without losing any data - how would I go about setting this up? Also, would I need to wipe the existing data on the drives in the process?

Thanks in advance for any help - this is a case of not really knowing what to Google! Happy Friday

Electronics Wizardy · October 14, 2022

Id switch to storage spaces in windows. This will let you mix drives of different sizes, and easily expand and shrink the pool later on. You would need to wipe it before seting up storage spaces, but its a much more flexable setup.

Bdavis · October 15, 2022

After using TrueNAS and ZFS, I'd never go back to using windows for a NAS. Try installing TrueNAS or unraid on a VM or old machine and see if you like them.

Yes, you will need to wipe your drives on any os if you decide to create a new storage config.