General Questions about - what capacity to expect, BBM, OS vs Firmware

[mikesmith_inFL]

Hi,
I just finished going from a 2 disk Raid1 config on my NAS to filling the slots with 4 4TB drives.
Reading so much lately has my eyes bugging out, but somewhere I read that someone should expect to get 12TB capacity from using 4 4TB drives in RAID5.
My capacity is sitting at 8.04 TB ( or 8.16, depending on where I look).
That did seem a bit small, so I thought I'd ask - What SHOULD I be able to expect for capacity with 4 4TB drives in RAID5?
( see ANSWER below )

The next question is about BBM. At first I was just going to ask if it's still better to enable it since the drives have their own bad block systems, but when I looked at things today I found that it is already enabled.
Yesterday, it was still saying "NO" in the BBM column of the volume management section.
Is BBM supposed to turn itself on?
And if so, I guess that answers my question about whether to use it or not.
If NOT, does that mean that something might be failing somewhere - or how does it get turned on without me doing it. (It's a home system and I'm the only one using it)

Finally - the question about the 'OS' vs 'firmware'.
Again, I read that the OS IS the firmware, but when I updated my firmware, the OS is still an older version.
Could anyone explain whether the 'OS' is actually the 'firmware' or not?

Thanks.

This isn't urgent or anything, mostly just curious - I hope.
The question about the BBM 'might' be more than just curious, depending on the answer.

ANSWER to the usable capacity problem:
For others that might have the same trouble - the button for 'Expand Capacity' is on the bottom right of the
'Replace Disks One by One' page under the 'Management' page of the 'Storage/Snapshops' section.

[mikesmith_inFL]

Here's some more about the capacity question.
Shouldn't the volume capacity be a lot larger?

I found a comment in an old thread - viewtopic.php?t=153697#p745569 about "How to upgrade drives in place on TS-431+"
and also found a similar conclusion on the QNAP Raid Calculator :

https://www.qnap.com/en-us/nas-selector ... 4,4&raid=5

And here's a link to a pic of my volume management page that indicates mine is much smaller.
Would someone please explain why? - Thanks

[Toxic17]

what is your DataVolume type? thick / thin or static? are you using storage pools? you information is somewhat lacking. are you able to resize your volume perhaps?

do some full screen shots of the storage and Snapshots windows.

Overview - Storage

Storage - Storage/Snapshots

[mikesmith_inFL]

It looks like I've got a Static volume and I'm not using storage pools.
I couldn't locate any info about resizing the volume.
The closest thing that seemed near that was Expand that led to "Create and Add a New Raid Group", but that didn't seem appropriate.

Here are the pics:

[holger_kuehn]

Going with this pic I'd expect 10.92 TB or a bit less. Have you switched he'd the drives by the one-by-one procedure? Maybe you haven't gone back there to hit the Expand Capacity button yet?

[mikesmith_inFL]

<removed pic for brevity - see in previous post>

Going with this pic I'd expect 10.92 TB or a bit less. Have you switched he'd the drives by the one-by-one procedure? Maybe you haven't gone back there to hit the Expand Capacity button yet?

It's weird that 4 4TB drives would wind up with so little capacity.
Is there any connection between the size of the original drives and the capacity that winds up with the new ones?
I started with 2 3TB drives in RAID1 before migrating to RAID5 with that one-by-one procedure using the 4 new drives.

I did use the one-by-one procedure but don't remember an Expand Capacity button. I think there was an option somewhere about setting to max size but can't remember for sure if it wasn't just reading about it in one of the manuals.

I've been looking for it but can only find an 'Expand' button in the Storage/Snapshots Manage Volume section.
The options there don't seem to fit.
One option says "Create and add a new raid group" and the other is "Add new disks to an existing raid group"

The manual from the Help Center doesn't seem to have anything about Expand Capacity.

[Toxic17]

You need to highlight the volume and then select the action to expand from what I can remember it’s not just available unless the volume/storage is selected.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

[holger_kuehn]

It's weird that 4 4TB drives would wind up with so little capacity.

1. Your 4TB drive is only 3.64 TB to begin with.
2. RAID 5 means only 3 of 4 drives are available for data.

Hence 10.92 total.

[mikesmith_inFL]

You need to highlight the volume and then select the action to expand from what I can remember it’s not just available unless the volume/storage is selected.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

This is the only 'Expand' option I can find, and it doesn't seem to be what I should do to get the rest of the disk capacity.
Am I misunderstanding this? All 4 drive bays are filled with the 4 TB ( 3.64TB ) drives and appear to be recognized by the NAS.

Is this actually the option I should be using to get the NAS to recognize the usable capacity?

[mikesmith_inFL]

It's weird that 4 4TB drives would wind up with so little capacity.

1. Your 4TB drive is only 3.64 TB to begin with.
2. RAID 5 means only 3 of 4 drives are available for data.

Hence 10.92 total.

I think I understand it.
When the calculator, above, is referring to the 4 4TB drives and 12TB usable capacity and 4TB data protection, that's the 'marketing' capacity, while the real usable capacity will be the 10.92TB.

But after adding the 2 new 4TB drives to the volume and then using the 'replace disks one-by-one' for switching out the original 3TB drives with the other 2 4TB drives,
I still wind up with only 8.04 or maybe 8.16TB capacity. ( shown in pic of my reply on Fri Apr 23, 2021 11:25 pm )

Also, please see my reply to Toxic17 above.
Is it likely that the 'Expand Static Volume Wizard' option to 'Create and add a new Raid Group' is
what I should use? After reading about it, it's definitely counterintuitive to think that's the next step.

[holger_kuehn]

Is it likely that the 'Expand Static Volume Wizard' option to 'Create and add a new Raid Group' is
what I should use? After reading about it, it's definitely counterintuitive to think that's the next step.

I'm not using static volumes, but as it's underlying RAID it should be similar. On The Replace-One-By-One Screen should be a Expand Capacity-option:

Expand.png

The one you mentioned is for adding an additional drive and not applicable in your case.

[mikesmith_inFL]

holger_kuehn & Toxic17 -

Thank you both, you were correct.

I looked everywhere I could but must have looked right past that button.
It got to the point that I put in a support ticket and Qnap support got to it via remote support.
I must have looked at that page a dozen times and didn't see the option.

For others that might have the same trouble - the button for 'Expand Capacity' is on the bottom right of the
'Replace Disks One by One' page under the 'Management' page of the 'Storage/Snapshops' section.

[GregBinSD]

mikesmith,

What a timely post you made, since I just upgraded a TS-431-XeU from 2 3TB drives to 4 4TB drives, and did a replace one by one just like you did, and ended up with a capacity of only 8.16TB.

Thanks to you and the forum, I found the Expand Capacity button where you said it would be, where I had also overlooked it. My disk array is expanding as I type this!