RAID question?

[Beeeyeee]

So I'm looking at getting a NAS. Since I don't have like $1200 for my long term storage plan, is there a way I could use two drives with redundancy, then add two more Drives later for RAID 5? Could the data be transferred seemlessly somehow or would I have to purchase all new drives and transfer manually?

[Electronics Wizardy]

depends on the system. What are you using. I think synology and qnap can.

 

Most don't allow switching of raid levels, but some do(btrfs)

[Beeeyeee]

Just now, Electronics Wizardy said:

depends on the system. What are you using. I think synology and qnap can.

 

Most don't allow switching of raid levels, but some do(btrfs)

I was going to get this one I think. Synology Disk Station 4-Bay Diskless Network Attached Storage (DS416j) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i2W-xb4ASS0GG

[ARikozuM]

You can sometimes add to an array but changing RAID 1 to RAID 5 isn't possible without breaking IIRC.

 

[Electronics Wizardy]

1 minute ago, Beeeyeee said:

I was going to get this one I think. Synology Disk Station 4-Bay Diskless Network Attached Storage (DS416j) https://www.amazon.com/dp/B019ZUR5WQ/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_api_i2W-xb4ASS0GG

If you set it up with the synology nas raid(modifed linux md) You can add drives and mix sizes and always have 1 drive redundancy.

[Mark77]

Yeah definitely.  However, RAID-5 sucks and good use cases are really few and far between.  RAID-6, if you absolutely have to, with decent hardware, UPS, battery backup, etc.  But otherwise most people are better off with normal redundant mirrors (ie: RAID-1).    If you configure a 2-drive RAID-1 as a RAID-10 on Linux md, it has the read performance of a RAID-0.

 

 

[samiscool51]

some can do it, some can't

but it also depends on your hardware

some hardware can't expand the array and it has to wipe it to expand it

it's anoying and inconventent, they way i do it is just buy the ammount of storage i will need for ~2-3 years and then upgrade the server and transfer the data

the amount i currently need is ~8TB, 8 1TB HDD's in RAID 1