RAID HD advice - Varrying HD sizes

[integramodder]

So I had a 5x 1TB RAID array. Over the last couple months, I've found some good deals on drives before the crazy price increase. I now have rebuilt the box and added 2x 2TB and 1x 3TB which brings me up to 12 TB across 8 drives connected to a RocketRaid 2320. Eventually I'd like to upgrade everything to 2TB+ drives, but with the current pricing spike and my lack of a "need" for more storage, I can wait.

I thought I could just do online expansion to take advantage of the new space, but logically so, the RAID controller is only taking 1TB from each of the new drives leaving me with an 8x 1TB RAID 5 array and a surplus of 4TB.


Any advice that anyone else can suggest on anything that can be done with this setup? Keep in mind, my original 3.63TB array has ~80GB free, so I cant just pull 3.5 TB somewhere to rip everything apart.

TIA

 

[integramodder]

ttt

 

[integramodder]

 

[BFG10K]

Any advice that anyone else can suggest on anything that can be done with this setup?

I’m not sure what you’re asking? RAID works around the principle of lowest common dominator when determining the total storage pool. If you don’t want to waste space then ether disable RAID or only RAID drives that are the same size as each other.

 

[noblemo]

I’m not sure what you’re asking? RAID works around the principle of lowest common dominator when determining the total storage pool. If you don’t want to waste space then ether disable RAID or only RAID drives that are the same size as each other.

+1 :thumbsup:

You'll need to transfer the contents of the RAID to another location (to the cloud temporarily if you have the time), and reconfigure the drives as two separate arrays, or a mix of RAID and JBOD. Otherwise, just live without the unallocated space.

 

[integramodder]

+1 :thumbsup:

You'll need to transfer the contents of the RAID to another location (to the cloud temporarily if you have the time), and reconfigure the drives as two separate arrays, or a mix of RAID and JBOD. Otherwise, just live without the unallocated space.

4 TB to the cloud? Really?

I think I can have 4TB RAID 5 with 5x 1TB, 4TB RAID 5 with 2x 2TB & 1x 3TB, with a left over TB from the 3TB drive