Any NAS that supports utilizing full capacity of different sized drives?

[thenew3]

My trusty old home server (built from an old PC) died today after nearly 10 years of service.

Looking to possibly replace it with a NAS box of some sort.

I tried to look online for reviews but didn't find anything that answers this question:

Are there any NAS that support using the full capacity of different sized drives in a RAID 5 or 6 Array?

I'm trying to minimize costs by reusing my existing HD's. I've got a # of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB drives in my home server, and with windows I was using a software RAID 6 type of storage that was able to utilize all the space of all drives.

I'm looking for a 4+ bay NAS that can do the same.

Thanks for any recommendations

 

[coxhaus]

If you don't run redundancy then you can use the full space of all drive. That means you need manual backups to other hardrives. You will end up with more space overall but you need to remember cross backup the drives.

Maybe setup an area where you don't need redundancy. This will increase your overall space too because you don't need to back it up.


If you use robocopy with the /mirror option it will keep your logical drive in sync for backup. Then you can schedule your robocopy jobs to run automatically.

 

[thenew3]

I use windows offline files to sync folders from various computers to my old home server. Hoping to do the same with a nas to minimize training everyone to do something different.

I do want redundancy, as much as possible, Thus looking at RAID 6 support.

I know DROBO can use full drive capacity, but I'm not excited about the slow performance and high price. Had one over 10 years ago and did not like it at all as it was slow and buggy and at one time crashed so bad it lost several hundred gigs of data.

 

[coxhaus]

If you are going to use RAID then no, the drives need to be the same size. I personally think RAID 6 is a waste. I would use RAID 10 or 5. I only use RAID 5 if I have at least 6 drives. It works better with more drives.

If you use different brands of drives in RAID 5 I would keep an extra ready or be able to buy one quick and not wait for shipping.

I think running all the same models of drives in RAID 5 helps when you put them under load.

If you lose the logical drive you can not recover a striped drive.

 

[yk101]

My trusty old home server (built from an old PC) died today after nearly 10 years of service.

Looking to possibly replace it with a NAS box of some sort.

I tried to look online for reviews but didn't find anything that answers this question:

Are there any NAS that support using the full capacity of different sized drives in a RAID 5 or 6 Array?

I'm trying to minimize costs by reusing my existing HD's. I've got a # of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB drives in my home server, and with windows I was using a software RAID 6 type of storage that was able to utilize all the space of all drives.

I'm looking for a 4+ bay NAS that can do the same.

Thanks for any recommendations

Synology SHR can do it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[thenew3]

Synology SHR can do it!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Thanks! Just looked into it. Looks like the DS418j may be a good entry level NAS that does what I need

 

[yk101]

Thanks! Just looked into it. Looks like the DS418j may be a good entry level NAS that does what I need

Glad to be of help! Just keep in mind that you should setup slice size manually, and set it to 500GB. If you let Synology do it, the slice size will be the size of the smallest disk and you will lose space!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

 

[sfx2000]

My trusty old home server (built from an old PC) died today after nearly 10 years of service.

Looking to possibly replace it with a NAS box of some sort.

I tried to look online for reviews but didn't find anything that answers this question:

Are there any NAS that support using the full capacity of different sized drives in a RAID 5 or 6 Array?

I'm trying to minimize costs by reusing my existing HD's. I've got a # of 2TB, 1.5TB and 1TB drives in my home server, and with windows I was using a software RAID 6 type of storage that was able to utilize all the space of all drives.

You should consider just getting a new batch of drives if going to a dedicated NAS box. If you're going to invest in the box, invest in the drives.

Some NAS's will allow you to mix/match sizes of drives, but one can get into a dark place of the JBOD's, where recovery will be essentially impossible to do.

 

[ColinTaylor]

Just had a look at Synology SHR - So it's just like Solaris Volume Manager then. "Hey Synology! Welcome to the 1990's".

[Don't get me wrong, I like Solaris Volume Manager!]

 

[sfx2000]

[Don't get me wrong, I like Solaris Volume Manager!]

ZFS is fun