HS-210 with different size drives...

[harry66]

Hi experts,

I currently have a TS119+ fitted with a 2TB Hitachi drive and am thinking of upgrading to a HS210.

If I purchase a 3TB drive and setup RAID1, I understand that the RAID1 will be limited to 2TB.

Just wanted to know what happens to the remaining 1TB on the 3TB drive - can I still use it in NON-RAID storage?
If that is the case, then could I just setup the first 1TB of each drive as RAID1 and use the remaining 1TB (drive1) and 2TB (drive2) as normal storage.

The reason I want to do this is that I only really want to protect my Photos, Music and documents with RAID - but the bulk of my disk capacity is used to store my ripped Bluray collection - which I dont mind losing - as worse case scenario I can re-rip them - cant justify the extra cost of RAID for them.

Apologies if these are dumb questions and have been answered before - did do a search but could not find a definitive answer.

Thanks!

[pwilson]

Hi experts,

I currently have a TS119+ fitted with a 2TB Hitachi drive and am thinking of upgrading to a HS210.

If I purchase a 3TB drive and setup RAID1, I understand that the RAID1 will be limited to 2TB.

Just wanted to know what happens to the remaining 1TB on the 3TB drive - can I still use it in NON-RAID storage?
If that is the case, then could I just setup the first 1TB of each drive as RAID1 and use the remaining 1TB (drive1) and 2TB (drive2) as normal storage.

The reason I want to do this is that I only really want to protect my Photos, Music and documents with RAID - but the bulk of my disk capacity is used to store my ripped Bluray collection - which I dont mind losing - as worse case scenario I can re-rip them - cant justify the extra cost of RAID for them.

Apologies if these are dumb questions and have been answered before - did do a search but could not find a definitive answer.

Thanks!

Please review "pre-existing" message thread: New drive not recognized in RAID size.
Welcome to the Forum.

PS: You didn't search very hard.....

[harry66]

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried searching on several occasions and do remember seeing that thread - that is where I understood that the RAID1 will be limited to 2TB by the smallest drive - which I state in my post.

However, I did not see anything in that thread which answered the questions (for my dumb head at least):
1) can I use the spare capacity for non-RAID storage.
2) it also did not help me confirm if can limit the RAID to just 1TB of each drive

and besides that thread talked about RAID5 and I am just after a simple RAID1 - have read about the differences on Wikipedia.

Thanks.

[pwilson]

Thanks for the reply.

I have tried searching on several occasions and do remember seeing that thread - that is where I understood that the RAID1 will be limited to 2TB by the smallest drive - which I state in my post.

However, I did not see anything in that thread which answered the questions (for my dumb head at least):
1) can I use the spare capacity for non-RAID storage.
2) it also did not help me confirm if can limit the RAID to just 1TB of each drive

Thanks.

No. You can not use the "wasted space". Buy a Drive Dock. (This is why I never purchase 2-Bay NAS devices anymore. RAID1 is a huge 50% space loss on equal sized drives. With RAID5 on a 4-Bay NAS I only loose 25% of my space to RAID redundancy.

[harry66]

Ok - thanks for the clarification - guess I will just continue to periodically backup my photos+music and stick to my TS119+ for now.
I have one of those docks you linked to in the other thread.

Cheers.