D16 RAID6 adding additional drives

RAID storage for video editing professionals or who care much about the speed
Post Reply
User avatar
boris22x
Posts: 8
Joined: 30 Jan 2022, 01:14

D16 RAID6 adding additional drives

Post by boris22x »

Hi,
I am having D16 with 5 drives in RAID6 configuration. I ordered additional drives which I want to add to the RAID6 array. I am using macOS which I understood has limitations and you cannot add drives under macOS but you can add them under Windows, correct? So my scenario will be:
1. connect the D16 to a Windows machine
2. add one new drive at a time one by one to the RAID6 letting the RAID rebuild between adding the drives
3. after all new drives are in and RAID rebuild shutdown and connect to the macOS
4. resize the partition

Can anyone confirm this is a working procedure and I will not lose data?
Thank you!

Boris
User avatar
TMAY
Posts: 70
Joined: 17 Aug 2021, 10:00

Re: D16 RAID6 adding additional drives

Post by TMAY »

Hello, Mac Disk Utility does not support expanding volumes. In addition, the Windows volume file format is not compatible with Mac OS volumes. If the eXFAT format is compatible with large-capacity hard drives, it is not very good. I suggest you choose to use or expand the volume on Windows, or in Do not use RAID expansion on Mac.
User avatar
boris22x
Posts: 8
Joined: 30 Jan 2022, 01:14

Re: D16 RAID6 adding additional drives

Post by boris22x »

{L_BUTTON_AT}TMAY
Thank you! AFAIK HFS+ supports resizing volumes by diskutil resizeVolume. Is the RAID rebuilding software aware of the filesystem? If not, then it should not matter whether I add under Windows additional drive to the RAID and the underlying filesystem is none/RAW/NTFS/HFS+ or any other. If the RAID software is messing up with the underlying filesystem then it is not good.
User avatar
boris22x
Posts: 8
Joined: 30 Jan 2022, 01:14

Re: D16 RAID6 adding additional drives

Post by boris22x »

As the rebuild performance was unbelievably slow I decided to rebuild the RAID with 8 drives. The backup of all the data and restoration of all the data was faster than a RAID rebuild.
Post Reply