My QNAP TL D800C contains 8 x 16TB hard drives. How should I allocate the drives and configure them as RAID 5 to maximize usable storage space?
Currently, I have set up two RAID 5 arrays, both formatted as NTFS. In my WIN10 File Explorer, they are shown as spaces of 38.7TB and 38.6TB respectively. In actual use, File Explorer shows available space as 28TB and 10.2TB, but strangely, when I try to save new files to either RAID, I get the message “Please delete or move files to free up enough space” and cannot save anything.
In WIN10’s [Storage Management → Storage Pools], it shows that 116TB of pool capacity has been used. The two RAID 5 storage spaces are shown as three-way mirror 38.7TB using 85.3TB pool and three-way mirror 38.7TB using 31.0TB pool. However, File Explorer clearly shows there is still 28TB + 10.2TB available, yet with 8 x 16TB hard drives, I am only able to use less than 39TB of space!!!
Is there something wrong with my configuration? How should I allocate the drives and configure RAID 5 to maximize usable storage space?
It looks like the TL D800C is directly connected to Windows.
From the information available here, the D800C provides 8 hard drive slots, and all array management is handled by Windows.
You mentioned three-way mirroring, which means you are already using RAID 6 mode, allowing for two disk failures instead of just one.
Regarding how to set up RAID in Windows, I found some tutorials:
