Building a NAS

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mozga628

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May 9, 2012
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I am looking at purchasing and setting up a NAS. i am looking at either the WD EX4 or the synology DS1813+.
i cannot afford to max either of these devices to their full 24TB immediately (nor do i need that amount of storage immediately).
so my question is this, can i start either of these devices with a single HDD then add additional HDD's as needed, and if so, will these NAS's automatically build/update the raid and balance the data stored on each drive.
i'm not sure i am conveying my thoughts correctly, but any insights about building a NAS over time would be greatly appreciated. thanks!
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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First off, let me suggest you go with the Synology. You'll be much happier that you did. Migrating from a single drive might not be possible, I would suggest you start with at least three drives in a RAID 5 configuration. From there you should be able to migrate to any configuration you want.
 
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mozga628

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going with the synology and starting with three 3tb drives in a raid5...
will the synology automatically reconfigure the raid when i add a 4th hdd, or a 5th?
being user friendly is pretty high on my importance list also....
 
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JaredDM

JaredDM

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It won't just do it on it's own the second you put the disk in. You'll need to go into storage management and tell it to expand the storage onto the added drives. But, it'll handle all the expansion and you'll even still have access to the data while it's expanding. You'll never even have to shut the unit down.
 
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popatim

popatim

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With Synology it all depends on what you start with.

If you want raid 5 you have to start with 3 disks (four for raid6) and from there you can expand the size by adding more drives or replacing the drives one at a time with larger ones.

You can start with 1 drive and a share pool (SHR) and then later add mores drive later which will also add redundancy. Its Synologies Hybrid Raid (but everyone I know calls it share LoL).
A 1 drive SHR has no redundancy. If the drive dies your only recourse is to restore from backups.

Otherwise, With a SHR or a Raid 5, if one drive crashes you can replace the drive and the data will be restored to it automatically.

Please note that this does not mean you don't need a backup, what if lightning strikes and kills the nas and all the drives? Your important data needs to be backup up to something that can be disconnected (from power and data) You dont want lightning sneaking in from anywhere. Of course if the data isnt important then you dont need to back it up either.
 
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