TS-809U-RP with 512GB SDD that's about to fail.

[jzulkeski]

Here's the required info you guys ask for (hope I got this correct).

• Windows 7/8
• TS-809U-RP (firmware version: 3.8.4 Build 20130816)
• Single Port
• RAID 5
• 8 Drives
• Crucial
• M500 - ATA M4-CT512M4SSD2 000F
• Do not know the firmware of the drives.

My question is... I have a drive that is going to fail soon (see image):

raid5.jpg

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I want to preemptively fail the drive so I can remove it and replace it with a Crucial M500 960GB (CT960M500SSD1) - the 512GB models aren't available any longer. So my question is do I just use the Online RAID Capacity Expansion Procedure to fail the drive, then replace it? Then once it's in place, should I expand the capacity, or would I loose the hot spare functionality if I put a larger drive in place then expand it (should I just let the QNAP device partition it as a 512GB drive?).

My other question was theoretical... what if I didn't follow the capacity expansion procedure, and just pulled drive 1 with the RAID array running, and put the new disk in (hot swapped it)?

[doktornotor]

1/ Just pull the failed drive and hotplug a new one. Do NOT mess with anything else.
2/ You cannot expand anything unless you want to replace ALL the RAID-5 drives with bigger ones.

[jzulkeski]

doktornotor,

It's okay to pull the drive even though it's not failed and the raid array isn't degraded yet?

Also, the larger drive is okay to use, it'll just be partitioned as 512GB, right?

Lastly, how can I be sure the drive configuration is correct to make sure I actually can yank one of these out (or by default since it's RAID 5, is the fault tolerance one failed drive OK?)?

[doktornotor]

The array will get degraded as soon as you pull the drive. Note: Do NOT manually partition anything.

No idea what do you mean about drive configuration.