Hello,
Just to state out-right, I am new to using RAID.
I was going to get a WD EX4 16T NAS and RAID 5 it. Not anymore.
After watching the video about the Thecus N5550 I am going to get one of these little guys. It'll do everything I need, and then some. Plus, I can stretch out the cost of this badly needed upgrade to my home network.
My question lies in the migration and expansion of RAID arrays. According to the manual for the N5550 I can migrate from a 2xHDD RAID 1 array, to a 5xHDD RAID 6 array. This is my current plan.
It does not say I can migrate from JBOD to RAID anything, which is what I would rather do.
Can I do this JBOD to RAID migration as a normal thing?
I would rather do this: I could just do a JBOD thing, with 2xHDD, then at a later date add 3xHDD, mount them as RAID 5. Then move all the data to this RAID 5 array, and then expand the 3xHDD RAID 5 array with those 2xHDD to create an expanded 5xHDD RAID 5 array or RAID 6 array. I would really rather do the RAID 6 instead due to the double Parity.
Can I do this?
Am I right in thinking I can/should do this?
Further I understand that RAID 5 will essentially 'lose' 1xHDD worth of space to Parity, and with RAID 6 I would 'lose' 2xHDD to parity.
I have read that RAID 6 is built to handle the larger HDD's of today, while RAID 5 has trouble with them, Is this true? Beyond the single, and double redundancy of RAID 5 and 6, is there any other caveats I need to be aware of, or simply not thinking of, good or bad? I would welcome any other inputs/versions of things people would do instead of what I am proposing here, keeping in mind the RAID 5 or 6 type data loss prevention is preserved.
For those interested. This whole exercise is brought about due to the loss of 1x1 TB External drive just flat dying with no backup, and now I have another couple 2TB dying now too. These Drives are not driven hard, and the latest that is dying has been used long enough to play 2 movies, and put 2TB of information onto it. I have 10x 2TB drives, there is a 'mirrored' version of each 2TB drive, essentially giving me 10 total Terabytes of information with a Mirror copy and stored to prevent data loss. Half of the drives are showing signs of failing, the same way the 1 TB drive did just before it died. Needless to say, with approximately 100 dollars per 2TB drive, this is getting expensive, and EXTREMELY unwieldy if I need to retrieve anything. So a HUGE NAS it is.
Thanks for any help/insight