Can I add drives to a half built Qnap NAS to existing RAID?

NAS RAID question. I’ve never built RAID before but am on my 2nd DROBO for Time Machine backup.

Considering a new QNAP TS653D. I know I don’t have to fill all the bays initially (and probably won’t given short/intermediate term storage needs) but like the options of going from perhaps 4 to 6 drives, allowing ongoing RAID 5. If I have a 4 drive array then want to add 2 more (I presume identical as the QNAP software doesn’t allow mix/match as do DROBO and Synology) drives, can I just back up the array add them or will I need to back up the drive array, add the additional drives, rebuild/reformat the larger array, and then restore/reload from my external backup?

Thanks. You likely have already answered this in the multitude of your VLOGs but I couldn’t find it.

Yes, with Qnap you do not get combined storage capacity like on Synology or Drobo, but you can still add drives.

Qnap will allow you to add additional drives to an existing RAID. So if you have 2 disks in RAID 1 you can add an additional disk and move to a RAID5. If you have RAID5 with three disks or more you can add another and migrate to RAID6. All this, without a resetting system.

You can also add bigger size drives and create a separate RAID and have two volumes on the same NAS. Or if you add a bigger drive to a RAID with smaller drives then this bigger drive will still work, but it will be seen as big as the smallest drive in the RAID. Once you have replaced the smallest drives with a matching bigger drive then you will automatically get all those drives seen to its actual size.

I hope this helps.

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