Synology DS214Play - adding a hard drive

Pinkman

I have had a Synology DS214Play for a few years and brough one WD Red 3tb hard drive to go with it. I have run out of space so just purchased another hard drive of the same size. I am looking to find out the correct way of setting up this second hard drive. I don't need or want a second hard drive to mirror the first - just want to add more space .

I have read the articles on Synologys website on adding it to an existing Volumes or Disk Groups etc but am none the wiser as to the best way to just add a second hard drive to the current volume without it making a copy of the first.

I assume I need to chose SHR but there is a message that states " For SHR volumes, storage capacity is only expanded when adding drives to a volume with two or more drives."

If anyone can advise me as to what the best option would be I'd appreciate it as I have emailed Synology but they take ages to get reply.

ED E

Add a Drive to a Volume or Disk Group
Hard drives can be added to the following RAID types:
Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)
JBOD
RAID 5
RAID 6

This is what you want. If you do any sort of RAID you'll likely wipe the existing data. SHR is a twisted RAID5 that I wouldnt go near.

All the instructions are here:
https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/volume_diskgroup_expand_add_disk

Pinkman

ED E wrote: »

This is what you want. If you do any sort of RAID you'll likely wipe the existing data. SHR is a twisted RAID5 that I wouldnt go near.

All the instructions are here:
https://www.synology.com/en-global/knowledgebase/DSM/help/DSM/StorageManager/volume_diskgroup_expand_add_disk

Cheers.

Apparently the existing drive was set up as SHR and the only way of getting the new one not to be a mirror of the first is to backup and delete the first one and create a new volume. It sounds very time consuming.

I was given the following info on another forum.

If you want one single 6TB volume you need to delete the current volume and create a new RAID0 or JBOD one.
If you want 2 independent volumes, 3 TB each, simply create a new volume with the new disk.

But I am not sure what the downside would be of having my data on two separate volumes. I only use the NAS for streaming media and mainly only use DSVideo and Plex so I'm not sure how it would effect those. Any ideas?

ED E

RAID0: Faster than JBOD but if one disk dies you lose ALL data. Too risky for most.
JBOD: Speed of a single disk but also a failed disk only takes 50% of data

Independent disks: Messy IMO, what happens when you've 3.5TB of Video and 2.5TB of Pictures, you end up with a fragmented library (unless you want to sym link).

JBOD is what I'd do. And yes, as you started with a RAID you're going to have to pull the data off and start again.

Pinkman

Thanks for that. From what I can see the only way of setting up Plex is to have it in one location, therefor whatever films and tv show I have on Volume 2 would not work with Plex. Only the material on Vol 1 will. So really the only option is to have both drives on the one volume.

I already have most of the media backed up but not plex. I take it if I just copy the plex folder in and then reinstall it everything will be the way it is now or will I have to go through the process of matching up the metedata and artwork etc? I am trying to find the quickest way of doing it. I thought I would just buy a new hard drive, stick it in to expand the capacity. Didn't expect this.:p

Cheers.

ED E

You can add multiple directories to a library in Plex for windows, may work the same on the Synology version. That would solve the two drive problem.

You need to back up the plex metadata folder. They you wont need to rematch and fix all the bad matches. There are guides for each version (Synology will follow a path similar to Linux most likely).