if i set this up with a raid 5 array with only 5 drive is it possible to increase it later with more drives?
251042
Yes you can perform an online raid expansion. I'm sure you already know the standard warning but here goes anyway. Raid is not a backup. Always backup your data. Make sure your backed-up data is up to date before you perform the raid expansion!
1235419
The drives must be the same size and yes you can put only 4 drives in the NAS. In order to configure as a RAID 5 though you will need at least three drives. I used 5 drives and configured 4 of them as RAID5 leaving the 5th drive as a "hot spare".
1905077
You can add drives as you need them. The drives can be of mixed sizes too for the hybrid raid configuation; however, I recommend you try to keep to one drive size so select your initial drives with the thought of expanding later.
1094855
Assuming you have the letters available for the drives and each drive is powered, you could but the transfer speed will be horrible. I don't think I've pushed harder than 5 drives hooked up
1895541
If you are set on Raid 1, it will limit you to 4 TB because the other drive is duplicating #1. If you go into your WD My Cloud you can change from Raid 1 and obtain full use of the aggregate 8 TB if that is what you want.
1864510
Yes I have 1 ssd and 1 bluray burner and 1 drive but i could put 4 in raid 5 if i wanted too! Hope this helps
1994325
The Perc 5/i cannot use drives greater than 2TB. You would need to upgrade your RAID controller to a H700 before using this drive.
606995
It depends on the type of raid setup you use. There is a hybrid setup that makes use of all the drives and maximizes the space available. This way you can have different size drives. I accepted this as the default. I can't verify how it works though as all my drives are the same size. It's a bit slower than I would have liked also, but hey, it does the job.
1170960
In the past RAID has been a hardware supported function. I don't use this in a RAID setup as I only have two drives in it so far. You should view this as four separate USB to SATA bridges. Any RAID function you want to use will have to be 100% software implemented.
1024263
The backplane doesn't limit capacity - I have 4 x 4 TB drives in mine in a RAID 5 array (12 TB capacity) controlled by my motherboard. Any capacity limitations come from the SATA controller it is plugged into and/or your operating system. Note that this does not contain a SATA controller, and is basically a pass-through for connecting the drives to your computer's SATA controller.
606996
Yes, this can be done with Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR). And yes, the process is not difficult, i.e. it is "smooth" (if you meant something else by smooth, please let me know). But upgrading the drives on this unit is one of the benefits of it. If you use traditional RAID options, then no you will not be able to upgrade one drive at a time to increase capacity. From my discussions with Synology, 12 bay units are generally recommended with traditional RAID, but they did indicate that many people use SHR with no problems. Personally, I would try to minimize use of the unit during the upgrade since it may help speed up the expansion.
327454
That's the way it's designed to work. Otherwise, there's no point to having a RAID array and you might as well sync two hard drives. I own this enclosure and like it very much but I've not experienced a hard drive failure yet so I have no personal experience. Apparently, Mr. Morrissey does. I do not think the drives necessarily have to be identical, but the RAID array will end up being the size of the smaller hard drive.I would also note that the StarTech enclosure does not support RAID 5 (only 0 and 1) so Showman's RAID 5 could not have been in this StarTech enclosure.
91777
You can configure the drive however you like (raid 1 or 0) and it works stand-alone or daisy chained. It's a very flexible and reliable drive.
1476794
yes you can, and as you add it will expand the RAID. Check out the Thecus forum or tech support their is a lot of answers there.
1895543
It's either/or. When you set the drive up you have the choice of using the RAID 1 or 0 configuration. If you decide to change your mind later, you'll end up losing everything you've stored on the drive. I stuck with the RAID 1 config to provide redundancy, even though it cut the capacity by half.
327902
No add them as you need them. You do need at least 2 or 3 (I don't remember which) for their flavor of RAID to work for data protection. Drives will be reformatted when inserted!
558272
I setup with RAID 1, according to instruction, it also support Raid 0, 5...