Path forward after upgrading hard drives, cannot expand legacy volume size

English Storage
1

I have a legacy storage volume (not storage pool). I was previously on 4 4TB disks. I upgraded to 4 16TB disks and replaced them one by one, and the RAID was successfully rebuilt each time. When I went to expand the storage size, I got a message saying “the system can only support expanding the volume size up to 16tb”. And I was not allowed to change the size of my volume. What is my least disruptive path forward? I still have the old disks and they were working fine. If I have to do a painful migration to a storage pool, what’s the recommended way of setting that up? I see advice like “create a backup” but I don’t understand what’s involved.

  • Your Operating System you are using to access your NAS: Windows 11

  • TVS-473

  • Firmware Version/Build numbers - not just “The latest”: 5.2.9.3451

  • Network Setup (ie Single Port or Port Trunking): Single port

  • If Disk related please also specify:

  • Drive Configuration: RAID5

  • Number of drives: 4

  • For each drive please provide: All 4 drives are

  • Drive Manufacturer: Western Digital

  • Drive Model: 16TB WD161KFGX

2

Only way forward is to kill the NAS and restore from backups, the old disks cannot be used as backup because they were swapped one after the other and are desynced.

If you do not have a backup, see this as a hint of fate and create one (USB,2nd NAS, cloud, etc)

3

I don’t have a backup currently. Could you be more specific/link to help articles? I acknowledge the old disks are essentially blank at the moment. I don’t have a second NAS, a 10TB USB, or a cloud account that’ll hold 10TB for me.

4

That’s what I meant with hint of fate, go to the store and buy a 10+TB HDD or second NAS or rent a cloud storage account.

Your situation is several magnitutes cheaper and easier to solve than when your NAS or disks crap out and you have to pay for VERY expensive data recovery services.

5

Thanks! I already have 4 4TB drives idle and 4 16TB drives in the device. Could I downsize the RAID to 3 16 TB disks and use one of the 16TB drives as the backup?

Or I guess I could try putting the old drives in my PC and backup the data to there?

6

You could degrade the RAID5 and externally connect one drive (enclosure or dock) for backups
BUT your RAID5 would run without fault tolerance and a single failure of one of the drives would kill access to your files..risky business.

You could also buy a TR-004 and throw your 4x4TB drives in there for 12TB RAID5 backup storage

7

I’m… looking for options that don’t involve buying a new NAS. LOL. What about switching back to the 4TB drives in the NAS, backing up to the 16TB. Use the remaining 3x16TB for RAID5 for a fresh storage pool, restore the backup, then add the 4th drive? Is that less risky?

8

As said, your old disks are desynced, you swaped them over time and not all at once.

So if you put your old disks back in, your data is gone

9

Right, but I can swap them back in one at a time, right?

10

No, they are too small to be swapped in now.

The md RAID has been build with larger drives and you cannot fit smaller members into it now.

11

This is indeed a limitation of legacy storage volumes. To resolve this, as dolbyman mentioned, the safer approach would be to back up your data, recreate the RAID, and then transfer your data back.

12

Thanks! That’s a real bummer. I’d be in a much better situation if QNAP warned me before letting me swap to the larger drives. I installed two 4TB drives on Windows as RAID 0, my plan is to backup, swap with the other two 4TB drives, backup again, and finally I can recreate the QNAP’s RAID and restore.

Do you think all the stuff I previously setup like Portainer will be restored when I restore the backup?

13

The backup will be your data only, containers are best backed up via setup as compose (and data files in userspace)

All you then have to do, is reissue the compose and your container is back

14

Thanks! This is going to mess up everything, right? All my accounts, settings, folder permissions, right? Sounds like restoring this is going to be a giant project that will take hours if not days and I may never get it working quite right again. Is there anything else I should backup?

Again, I’m willing to read documentation.

15

Did you backup your container data folders?

They are not in userspace (meaning visible via shares) by default

16

Thanks! I do see a //Containers folder as being selected for backup, is that what you mean? I don’t use Container Station, but it seems to be aware of my Portainer packages.