How to Expand RAID Capacity (Online RAID Capacity Expansion)

*Online RAID capacity expansion, online RAID level migration, and RAID recovery are not supported by one-bay NAS models, TS-210, and TS-212.

WARNİNG: Dont Try This if  Your Total Volume is Mpre Than 16 TB! (16 Tb is Maximum Limit)

The Challenge of Modern Business

The biggest challenge facing the modern business today is to select and set up a truly reliable network-attached storage server to save and share important data securely and to increase the work efficiency of different departments. Meanwhile, it is also important to set up a reliable backup policy to reduce the risk of data loss.

QNAP Turbo NAS series provide a high performance data center and a real low TCO (total cost of ownership) solution for modern business. In addition to the complete specification, easy-to-use applications, QNAP Turbo NAS series offer innovative and dominant features: Hot-swap hard drive design with Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration. In the past, only few corporate have budgets for the advanced functions. QNAP has successfully implemented these powerful features and designed more convenient operation procedure to enable business users to enjoy these functions in simpler steps.

This application note demonstrates different scenarios (take NAS user Jeffrey for example) and the steps to use the powerful Online RAID Capacity Expansion and Online RAID Level Migration, and how the user benefits from the powerful expansion function.

Let’s get started!

Online RAID Capacity Expansion

Usecase scenario

  • Jeffrey invested four 250GB hard drives for initial setup of TS-509 Pro and configured RAID 5 disk configuration with the four drives.
  • A half year later, the data size of the department has largely increased to 1.5 TB. In other words, the storage capacity of TS-509 Pro is running out of use. At the same time, the price of 1TB hard drives has dropped to a large extent.

RAID expansion usage scenario

Operation procedure

In ‘Disk Management‘ > ‘RAID Management‘ page, select the drive volume for expansion and click on ‘Expand capacity‘.

Click on 'Expand capacity'

Click ‘Change‘ for the first hard drive to be replaced. Follow the instructions to proceed.

Change the drive for expansion one by one

Tips: After replacing the hard drives, the description field shows the message “You can replace this drive”. This means you can replace the hard drive to a larger one or skip this step if the hard drives have been replaced already.
Caution: When the hard drive synchronization is in process, do NOT turn off the NAS or plug/ unplug the hard drives.

When the description displays ‘Please remove this drive‘, remove the hard drive from the NAS. Wait for the NAS to beep twice after removing the hard drive.

Remove the drive

Removing the hard drives

When the description displays ‘Please insert the new drive‘, insert the new drive to the drive slot.

Insert the new drive

Insert the new hard drives

After inserting the hard drive, wait for the NAS to beep. The system starts rebuilding.

Wait for the RAID rebuilding

After rebuilding finishes, repeat the steps above to replace other hard drive(s).

Repeat the steps above to replace the remaining disks

After changing the hard drives and rebuilding completes, you can click ‘Expand capacity‘ to execute RAID expansion.

Click 'Expand Capacity' to execute the RAID expansion

Click OK to proceed.

Click on 'OK' to proceed

The NAS beeps and starts to expand the capacity.

The NAS beeps and starts to expand the capacity

The process may take from hours to tens of hours to finish depending on the drive size. Please wait patiently for the process to finish. Do NOT turn off the power of NAS.

The process might take hours

After RAID expansion is finished, the new capacity is shown and the status is Ready. You can start to use the larger capacity. (In the example you got 3.7TB logical volume)

The size of the RAID volume is now expanded

Tips: If the description still shows ‘You can replace this hard drive‘ and the status of the drive volume says ‘Ready’, it means the RAID volume is still expandable!
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4 Responses to How to Expand RAID Capacity (Online RAID Capacity Expansion)

  1. Jeffrey says:

    Unfortunately , QNAP didn’t tell Jeffrey the Volume/RAID being expanded will be unavailable. Therefore leaving Jeffrey with no access to documents he desperately needs for his business. As his business demands growth. All Jeffrey can do now, is wait for the hours to tens of hours to pass by.

  2. qnapzap says:

    The biggest challenge facing the modern business today is finding technical solutions that really support business instead of having business being interrupted by IT processes that didn’t understand the needs from business.

    And unfortunately , QNAP didn’t tell Jeffrey the Volume/RAID being expanded will be unavailable. Therefore leaving Jeffrey with no access to documents he desperately needs for his business. As his business demands growth. All Jeffrey can do now, is wait for the hours to tens of hours to pass by.

    Perhaps a remark of the fact QNAP services will be disabled throughout the expansion process is worthwhile.

  3. qnapzap says:

    Perhaps a remark of the fact QNAP services will be disabled throughout the expansion process is worthwhile.

    The biggest challenge facing the modern business today is finding technical solutions that really support business instead of having business being interrupted by IT processes that didn’t understand the needs from business.

    And unfortunately , QNAP didn’t tell Jeffrey the Volume/RAID being expanded will be unavailable. Therefore leaving Jeffrey with no access to documents he desperately needs for his business. As his business demands growth. All Jeffrey can do now, is wait for the hours to tens of hours to pass by.

  4. Tim says:

    I have a QNAP TS-231 and replaced both 1TB drives with 5TB drives. I then tried to expand the capacity of but keep getting “RAID Expansion Size Failed”.

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