QNAP NAS – How to Expand or Migrate your RAID Volumes

Last updated on 03 Oct 2019 📧 Subscribe
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1 Adding Storage to a QNAP NAS Drive
2 Changing the RAID Configuration on a QNAP NAS
3 Example of the need to Upgrade your RAID and Storage
4 What is the Best NAS hard drive of 2019
5 Recommended NAS Hard Drives?
6 Need Advice on Data Storage from an Expert?

Adding Storage to a QNAP NAS Drive

Can you tell me the best way of adding two more WD 4TB Red drives to a qnap TS-453Be that already has two of the same drives configured as RAID 1. Looking at possibly changing to RAID5/6. Also do you add drives with the qnap already running, or must it be turned off before adding the drives.

Thanks

Changing the RAID Configuration on a QNAP NAS

For modern businesses and home NAS users, one of the greatest challenges is to select and set up a reliable network-attached storage server to secure and share important data to increase work efficiency. Meanwhile, the necessity to reduce the risk of data loss by backing up data increases. As your storage grows, it may become necessary to adapt the data backup policies to meet the changing demands of the data generated. The QNAP NAS series provides a high-performance and low-TCO (total cost of ownership) solution for the modern server user. In addition to best hardware specifications and growing list of applications, the QNAP NAS series also offers innovative features such as Online RAID Capacity Upgrade (for example, replace three 500GB hard drives with three 1TB hard drives) and Online RAID Level Migration (for example, RAID level migration from RAID 1 to RAID 5). These advanced features used to be exclusive to corporations with large budgets, but QNAP implements an intuitive way to allow more businesses to enjoy these powerful technologies.

The scenarios below will demonstrate how businesses can benefit from Online RAID Level Migration and Online RAID Capacity Upgrade. Remember, that as long as yoru NAS Drive supports Hot Swapping (which your TS-453Be does), then you will not need to power down your QNAP NAS when introducing the new HDD media, jsut remember that you will likely need to upgrade your NAS gradually, from RAID 1 to RAID 5 to RAID 6.

Additionally, you should ALWAYS have a backup in place when conducting any kind of NAS RAID migration, as even if a brand 100% confirms that the data will be safe, you cannot rely on any number of interrupting factors that can happen (major things such as incorrect drive selection, to simply the power in your home is cut out and it happening mid RAID change). So, always have a backup of your data in another location.

Example of the need to Upgrade your RAID and Storage

Online RAID Level Migration allows users to migrate to different RAID configurations via the web browser over the network or internet. The migration process can be done without turning off the NAS and without losing any data. However, you will need to ensure you upgrade in the right order. So, Online RAID Level Migration supports the following RAID migrations:

  • Single drive to RAID 1
  • RAID 1 to RAID 5
  • RAID 5 to RAID 6

User Case Example

  • Jeffrey invested back in 2015 in two 500GB drives for the initial setup of a TS-453A and used a RAID 1 configuration with the two drives. The TS-453A is used as a file server for data sharing among the department in his company and data is constantly being generated
  • After 4 years, the storage needs of his department had sharply increased. The current storage capacity of the TS-453A is no longer enough. Jeffrey planned to upgrade the storage capacity without losing data redundancy by adding disks to the RAID group and migrating the RAID 1 configuration to RAID 5.

To do this, the following is required:

  • Prepare hard drives of at least the same capacity as existing drives in the current RAID array.
  • Execute RAID Migration (Migrate the system from RAID 1 mode to RAID 5 by adding a drive), then adding an additional drive afterwards if requiring a RAID 6 and repeating the process

Go to “Storage Manager” > “Storage Space“. Select the storage pool that will be upgraded and click “Manage“. The “Storage Pool Management” window will launch. The current disk volume configuration displayed on the page is RAID 1 and the RAID capacity is 500GB.

Insert the new 500GB hard drives into the NAS.

In the “Storage Pool Management” window, click “Manage” > “Migrate“.

Select an available hard drive to add to the array. The RAID migration type and drive capacity after migration will be shown. Click “Apply” to continue.

Please note: The RAID migration sequence must be Single > RAID 1 > RAID 5 > RAID 6

All the data on the selected drive will be cleared. Click “OK” to confirm.

The migration progress is shown under “Status”.

Please note: The storage pool will be in “read only” mode when the migration process is in between 11% to 49%.

After migration completes, the new drive configuration will be RAID 5 and the status will be “Ready”. You can now start to use the new drive configuration.

Depending on the drive sizes, the process may take anywhere from a few hours to tens of hours to complete. Please wait patiently for the process to finish. DO NOT turn off the NAS.

What is the Best NAS hard drive of 2019

When choosing your first NAS device, as important as it seems to get the right network attached storage device, even more important is making sure you get the right hard drive or SSD Media to store your files on. Technically any hard drive (HDD) these days can be installed inside a network attached storage device. On the one hand, this is a good thing for those that like choice, but it is also a bloody awful thing for the indecisive or those that just want to know what the best hard drive to buy is right now. In order to use any hard drive in your NAS, you will need to make sure it is the following:
  • SATA connectivity (so some Enterprise drives will also support SAS)
  • At least 5400rpm or higher otherwise you there will be lag during access which only gets worse, the more drives you add.
  • at least 120GB and above in capacity, as often applications and NAS operating systems, plus updates, will be well over 50-80GB alone over the years
  • At least 64MB cache
  • Yep..that just above covers it!

Recommended NAS Hard Drives?

We highly recommend WD Red and Seagate Ironwlf for the best NAS Hard Drives, as they provide the best balance between price, warranty, support and capacity in 2019 – though in a pinch, you can use the Toshiba NAS Hard Drive range, though they can be noisy at the larger capacities.

wd red range for NAS hard drives disks seagate ironwold nas hard drive disk
WD Red HDD

For NAS Use

See the rest of the rest of the ahrd drive range series to buy

 Seagate Ironwolf HDD

For NAS Use

See the rest of the rest of the ahrd drive range series to buy

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      55 thoughts on “QNAP NAS – How to Expand or Migrate your RAID Volumes”

      4. Old video, I know.
        But I feel I must admonish you for encouraging people to set the admin credentials to ‘admin’ and ‘password’!
        I see with my new QNAP that I just got, it actually disables the ‘admin’ account after initial setup. Nice to see
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      7. Im not seeing how to map a network drive to C:/Users folder. I need the “user” accounts to live on the NAS so no matter which PC you login to your Documents/Downloads/etc are all there, for each windows user. I can’t seem to get this to work.
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      14. Also found that the QFINDER will not proceed past the third set up screen in version 5.1.4256 – have a called logged with QNAP support but this thing is taking days to set up … what a pain
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      17. 3:08 I’d prefer leaving my QNAP as DHCP and set a reservation of MAC address in router. You can do it either way, but I prefer doing it in router, as its more central, otherwise you’ve got to go into your devices to manually set.

        If you create a reservation list in your router then the job is done.. No ned to muck around and think “Do I need static on x device or not” but I guess your way gives you more flexibility. if you have many devices

        6:19 btw: QTS5.x bombards you with popups the unless you clock “don’t pester me”. :P. I know manufactures wanna get your attention, but this is not the way to do it

        No wonder people like using popup blockers …. There should be one for your local network too
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      19. Goodnight. Very good explanation. I have a doubt. If you have 2 disks in RAID 1 and put a 3rd disk. Can I move to RID 5 without losing data or do I have to set everything up again. Thanks.
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      20. Great Video, However I am stuck, i followed your video up to the point of Mapping Drives, Im using Qnap TS 264 on my LAN, with Windows 11 on PC and when i click network drives on Qnap Finder all it wants to do is is Mount my TS264 rather then search file explorer ?
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      21. This is one of those products you need but which I hate at the same time – it’s engineer masturbation and not made for quick and smart setup. It is made unnecessarily complicated. Plz clean up
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      25. I am giving my first steps installing and configuring a QNAP NAS and have seen many videos from you here on Youtube. I am from Brazil and (unfortunatelly) english is no my native language. I think you would get much more viewers for your channel if you talk a little bit slower, for us (not english native speakers) to understand. Thank you!
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      26. OMG “Yes”, I thought,” get a NAS, you have always wanted one!” So I got a NAS, little did I know the learning curve involved. WOW!!! A curve that has been flattened a lot by my new bestest friend Robbie here. Thank you Sir.
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      28. Can’t be stressed enough how important mapped network drives are. Just set up TS-464 and in the process of transferring data from an old Netgear ReadyNAS 1100. Using browsers and FileStation 5 is limited, with transfers stopping due to file size. Using mapped drives, that is, transferring directly from folder to folder has dramatically reduced my stress levels. Thanks for your videos!
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      29. Thanks for the vid, I have a newer model, and when i went through the same steps it broke off a 3.3TB piece for snapshots, and as far as I can tell i did not select that, i was told that was done. You know any way to reverse that? Just delete the array and start over? Not sure how to do that either, im still doing the initial setup as mentioned in your video.
        Thanks
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      30. Great video. thank you so much. I do have two questions.
        at 13:03 why did you skip the explanation between thin, thick and static?
        as per creating a volume, do I have to wait for the sync to complete before I create the static volume?
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      34. Very helpful, definitely a thumbs up! I have a question that you or anyone else might be able to answer. I have been using a two-bay model (TS-259) for quite some years now. I have it configured for RAID 1 with two 2TB drives. Last night, the power connection in the back of the enclosure melted for whatever reason and the unit is dead. Luckily, a friend had an unused TS-253 so I just popped out one of the drives, plugged it into the 253 and within minutes, was back up in a pinch. Was thinking of getting a new TS-231 or TS-233 to replace it. However, I only really use three folders out of a dozen or so on a daily basis. Those three folders combine for maybe 200GB in storage and the rest are long-term storage that I infrequently access. Would there be any benefit to having one 500GB SSD and one 2TB drive, with the SSD having the three folders I always use, and the HDD holding my longer term storage, plus a full backup (maybe daily overrides) of the SSD?
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      35. This is my first NAS set up. I chose this enclosure because I was able to get a decent amount of “bang for my buck”. I am following the tutorial but I have a couple of questions. First, when setting the Nas name and user account name AND PW is it supposed to take a while and hang while doing that or is it supposed to just process straight through that portion quickly? Additionally, since I will be using it with 2 laptops do I have to set up separate user names on each laptop even though I will be the only one using both laptops and accessing the NAS?
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      36. Hi i just bought my self a QNAP ts-x453d and I guess I did something wrong because I’m getting about 150ea error message a day for whatever reason in 3 of my email. How do I stop it or reduce it to only 1 or 2 email message
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      38. Hi, sorry for a very basic question. Is my understanding correct that your QNAP is connected via LAN to the same network as your Windows PC? The Qfinder is installed on that PC, so that it will help to detect the QNAP? Is my understanding correct?
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      42. As much as I appreciate this walk-thru…I despise everything about this product. There is nothing more intentionally difficult to setup than a NAS, and I’ve never wanted to throw a device off a bridge more than my QNAP NAS
        I’ve rebuilt car engines, and have been building computers since I was 8. QNAP is the worst thing I’ve ever experienced and I honestly don’t understand how someone hasn’t made a better version and completely destroyed this company

        Off. A. Bridge.
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      43. If we have to replace one of the drives do we have to do the entire initialization of the QNAP again? What happens after replacing a hard drive and also upgrading the RAM to larger?
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      44. Hi, great videos and thank you for doing this. We have a TS 669 and when dealing with the storage manager it did not give me the option of Raid 1 after I selected the six drives. Is raid 6 basically the same as a raid 1 and that is the reason?
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      50. I bought a 6 bay QNAP unit. The more I think about Raid and Pools, I don’t think I need a raid system or even a storage pool. 90% of the data that I want to backup is static, Photos, Video and Audio files. They won’t ever change again once they are written to archive disks. If I have 6 simple 18TB drives I can keep one drive empty and make a mirror copy, 5 in total, of each of my 5 archive drives and save them to to a local location and to an offsite location. If one of the drives goes bad, I can replace the bad drive with one of the backup drives and then back up the backup drive? It seems like raid is best for dynamic data that needs to span drives? I started with Reid 6 but realized it uses 50% of my total drive space. Any way you cut it if you want to back up your NAS you need another NAS or fixed drives.
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      51. Despite Hero being the new sooper dooper OS for QNAP I’ve had nothing but problems with it. First of all it doesn’t appear to support raid migration. So I had to wipe the disks and start again with RAID 1. Now I come to upgrade to RAID 5 on my way to RAID 6 and it won’t allow that.

        Looks like I will need to buy another USB drive to upgrade my NAS which is why I bought the NAS in the first place.

        Nothing is ever easy.

        Reply

      52. Hi, we have TS 228 having 4TB seagte enterpris drive installed. Now we want to add one more Hard disk of 8 or 10 TB.
        Is it ok to add 8TB HD..? And is it possible to keep this additional disk as seperate drive and not to add or merge with existing one.? Please guide with the procedure.. Thanks.
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