Replacing a RAID5 Disk with a larger disk?

[bearxor]

Hello all!

I have a small LG NAS that is running four 1 TB HD's in a RAID 5 array. It gave me about 2.87TB of disk space once built and formatted.

We're rapidly running out of room. This is only meant to be a temporary solution until a SAN gets approved and gets built and needs to last through the end of the year.

Can I pull one of the 1TB drives and replace it with a 2 TB drive, allow the array to rebuild and then have the extra disk space? Would it be possible, over the course of a month, to do this for all the disks to get to all the drives replaced with 2 TB ones?

Thanks in advance!

 

[bkch0]

only 1TB will be used from the 2TB drive when you do the replacement.

 

[ViviTheMage]

only 1TB will be used from the 2TB drive when you do the replacement.

/thread.

If you can, try to get the same model drive, even better.

 

[bearxor]

Thanks guys. Looks like we'll be adding a 2nd NAS before the end of the year then.

 

[Mark R]

Most NASs will allow you to add 1 drive at a time.

Once all drives are replaced all the space will become available. Until then no extra capacity is available.

Check your NAS manual.

 

[Emulex]

if it has raid expansion yes you can do a swap 1 for larger, rebuild, repeat. then expand or create a new logical volume.

iirc this qnap err cisco-nss324 has that capability. its part of the standard linux functionality ya know.

But always backup as those drives are very fragile