What is the difference between a Storage Pool & Volume?

[wm_cheng]

Hi all,

Sorry for another newbie question (but the manual already assumes you know what the difference is between a Storage Pool and Volume is). What are they? Are they like a partition? I gather Volumes exist within a Storage Pool? But when I first initialized my NAS, I got a DataVol1 but no Storage Pool. What are the benefits of each? I have 4 drives, 1x 4Tb and 3x 2Tb - I don't really need RAID, all I need is a place for storage. All my stuff is already on my desktop, I'll be using my NAS mostly as a destination backup/duplicate for what is already on my various desktops around the house - so I'm looking for the most capacity. Should I add all 4 drives into a Volume at once, or add them individually afterwords (which each drive creates a separate "Raid Group 1, 2, 3, 4"

Any help would be very appreciated.

[storageman]

Not all models support Storage Pools, so roughly x31/x51 and lower, nope… x31+/x51+ and higher, yep.
If your model doesn't show Storage Pools it just creates one default volume per RAID group.

See layout below as to the structure.

Storage Pools.png

Storage pools were introduced to allow expansion from head to expansion units and to go to larger volume sizes.
If you don't use RAID you negate the advantages of buying a NAS as you have no data protection.
Due to way RAID works 1x 4Tb and 3x 2Tb will work as 4 x 2TB because it works off the smallest disk size.

If I was you I would get another 2TB drive, build RAID 5 across 4 x 2TB (would give c5.6TB useable) and use the 4TB as an external backup drive (if you can stick in USB caddy).

Do try to do more reading!

[wm_cheng]

Thank you storageman!

Very good advice. I have been reading... so much to read/learn about, its kind of overwhelming. Its hard to find a easy basic site to start from that outlines the pros and cons of each scenario - the QNAP sites/manuals tend to assume you already know what the terms mean - there's no Glossary. It's a bit daunting coming from a beginners' prospective, especially after a 12hr work day, getting your kids to bed and finally having an hour or two after 10pm to learn about all this technical stuff that isn't related to my work at all. I came from the old Windows Home Server v1.0 world where everything was just kind of plug and play.

I do have a TS-451+ and I initially set it up as a Storage Pool but couldn't figure out how to create a volume from it - it was probably because I had mixed drives. RAID 5 is a good idea - but for now (I just don't have the time to reorganize my stuff or that many of the same sized drive) I just want to migrate all my stuff over to the NAS - the NAS is the duplication since I already have everything already on my desktops, I don't think I need the NAS itself to be duplicated unless I take stuff off my desktops and rely on the NAS as the sole file server (which is a good idea later on when I get larger drives).

Thanks.

[Don]

Something to keep in mind. If you use individual volumes or combine everything into a JBOD or RAID 0 (which really is not raid) you will not be able to migrate to a raid system later without backing up your data, rebuilding the NAS from scratch, and restoring your data.

[wm_cheng]

Thanks I kind of figured that out (on my own) about JBOD - although it would have been nice for the manual to lay that fact out so clearly as you have put it (maybe a pros and cons list?) - instead of letting me infer that from paragraphs of descriptions. It helps to have you guys tell me these things so I can be sure if I interpreted the manuals the right way.

Yeah, I figure if I migrate to RAID later on, I'll still have everything on my desktop computers anyways - I'll just lose the security of the duplicate backups for the time it takes to build the RAID, then copy everything back onto them which is a few days at most right? I just won't do it during a thunderstorm eh

[MrVideo]

I just won't do it during a thunderstorm eh

That's what UPS boxes are for. While they aren't good for long term power, they are good for getting equipment shut down before the UPS battery is depleted.

[wm_cheng]

Ah! Yet another great tip. I wish there was a beginners site somewhere with all these tips all in one place that's in plain language that is easy to follow.