What will happen if I remove a striping disk volume?

[henrik2011]

What will happen if I remove a striping disk volume?

Will I end up with 2 single disc volumens with data on both or 2 discs with no data?

I have 2 discs in a striping disk volume and want to expand with a 3rd and 4th to raid 5. It seems it's not possible to migrate from striping volume to raid 5, so I have to go back to single disc volumens and migrate to raid 5, So I am intereste to know if I have to backup the current striping volume before migrating to raid 5, or if I kan just remove the striping volume and build the raid 5 volume.

Server: TS-809U
Firmware: 4.1.3

[pwilson]

What will happen if I remove a striping disk volume?

Will I end up with 2 single disc volumens with data on both or 2 discs with no data?

I have 2 discs in a striping disk volume and want to expand with a 3rd and 4th to raid 5. It seems it's not possible to migrate from striping volume to raid 5, so I have to go back to single disc volumens and migrate to raid 5, So I am intereste to know if I have to backup the current striping volume before migrating to raid 5, or if I kan just remove the striping volume and build the raid 5 volume.

Server: TS-809U
Firmware: 4.1.3

Yes. RAID0 is a dead end street. There is no migration path from RAID0 to anything else. RAID0 is a poor choice for any NAS.

1. Backup your entire NAS
2. Wipe your drives
3. Reboot your NAS
4. Setup RAID5 on your drives
5. Restore your data

Do not attempt to restore your settings, or you will need to start the whole process again. (Your settings know you were on RAID0, so if you restore them, you will corrupt access to your new sensible RAID5 volume). If you want to be able to expand your new Volume later, keep it well below 16TB in size. (You can not expand past 16TB volumes on your NAS model).

You need a minimum of 3 drives to implement RAID5. I would not recommend implementing RAID5 on more than 4 drives. If you intend to use all 8 bays, I would recommend implementing it as 2 RAID5 arrays of 4 drives each. (Doing so would allow you to upgrade each array separately, so you would only need to replace 4 drives at each drive upgrade).

Continue to backup your NAS regularly. RAID is not a substitute for actually making Backups. (As you were using a risky RAID0 array, I can only assume that you were already backing up properly, as a failure of "any" Drive in a RAID0 volume results in complete data loss of the "entire array".

[henrik2011]

Thanks a lot for your quick reply and instructions on how to proceed. Also for reminding us all of the backup issue.

Yes I take backup... of some data.

[pwilson]

Yes I take backup... of some data.

If a drive fails, you lose "all" data.

Good luck with your rebuild. I hope you are successful.