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I have Three drives plugged into my QNAP and assigned to Storage Pool 1 I added a fourth hardd rive into my QNAP and I want to add it to Storage Pool 1.

I opened the Storage Manager. I opened the Storage Pools Menu. I clicked on Expanding Pool. I went through the Doalog options (Adding new hard drive, select drive 4, reading the summary). The step i am currently stuck on is the Expand Button.

There I am asked if I am sure that i want this. All the data on the hard drive(s) will be erased. Are you sure you want to continue? OK or Cancel.

I am not sure because i do not know what data will be lost. All Data on Hard drive 4 can be lost (it is empty). All the Date on the existing three drives in the storage pool has to be maintained. They are my only copy.

How does expanding work? Will i loose all data on drives 1,2,3,4. Or will i only loose data on drive 4?

I found similar questions to this one with good answers. But data is too important to not go the extra mile and ask if someone know this specifically for QNAP Hardware. Other Questions: 1,2

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Johannes
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  • This sounds to me like something you'd be best looking up in the documentation for the QNAP. – BE77Y May 01 '15 at 10:11
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    @BE77Y I agree but the manual does not contain this information. http://eu1.qnap.com/Storage/Manual/QTS_user_manual_SMB_eng_4.1_2015_0115.pdf – Johannes May 01 '15 at 11:27

2 Answers2

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The system question related to your new hard drive that you installed in Slot 4. If there is existing data on the new disk, you will lose that data only, not any existing data on the other 3 disks. I've done it before without losing any data, the only thing to note is that it takes about a day to complete.

MadHatter
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BruceC
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The system dialog box says exactly "All the data on the selected hard drive(s) will be erased. Are you sure you want to continue?" (QTS 4.1.2)

"Selected" means effectively "selected with a checkbox in the previous screen", so it does not concern drives already in use in the storage pool.

I have QTS 869L with QTS 4.1.2 with 2 6TB Seagate Enterprise SATA disks, each in separate RAID group (as RAID type "single drive"), defined as "Storage Pool 1" with more than 7TB of data on it. Today I have added 2 more 10TB Seagate Enterprise SATA disks, defined for them new "RAID group 3" and "RAID group 4" (both "single drive") and expanded the "Storage Pool 1" saving all data already present in the "Storage Pool 1". The process took not more than 2 minutes per disk!

I think QNAP could precise the drives in this dialog box, as this is the point of misunderstanding. Each time I'm doing this - I'm browsing the web one more time for an answer (as I'm not sure I remember it well - because you don't expand storage pool even every month, but once some years usually).

Lukasz
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