Hey c/Selfhosting, I’m finally dipping my toes into creating a NAS for my household, after saving up funds for awhile. Hopefully this is an okay place to ask a dumb question:

Is it possible to gradually add drives to a NAS while maintaining a RAID array?

I’m about to pull the trigger on an aoostar WTR Pro (4 bay), but budget will only allow for 2x 4tb drives to start off with. I’m wanting to do RAID1 for data redundancy, but eventually I’d want to add another 2x 4tb drives to get to 8tb of RAID1. Is this possible without having to copy out all the data from the NAS? Would I have to start the initial setup as RAID10 instead of RAID1? I wouldn’t mind doing trial and error with it if storage wasn’t so expensive down here in NZ, and the whole household’s data is going to be on it. Thanks for any guidance in advance

Context: Currently the plan is to either go with the 4 bay or 2 bay R1 pro with the Intel N150, install TrueNAS, Immich and Jellyfin, pretty lightweight stuff (I hope). Trying to keep it around NZD1000.

  • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
    3·
    14 days ago

    I am also working on building a new NAS, I didn’t realize it was going to be so damned expensive though…

    Currently I am thinking of going for ZFS with six drives, four pure storage, one parity and one hot spare, I would also need another drive as a cold spare…

    I am interested in ZFS due to it’s bitrot protection, I have already seen some of my photos affected by bitrot…

    • yeehaw@lemmy.caEnglish
      2·
      14 days ago

      Don’t bother with a hot spare. For household needs you’re just spending money to have a drive that will always be on. If you set up your notifications and your array right, you can have plenty of time to order a replacement.

      I went RAIDZ2 both times (dual disk redundancy, any two can die and its all good). Had a few spewing warnings over the years, and just replaced them.

      Anywho, my data array is about 10 years old but earlier this year I relocated to bigger disks and less disks. ZFS is worth it.

      • stoy@lemmy.zipEnglish
        2·
        14 days ago

        Interesting, I have to look into that, I am taking it slow, and will buy storage drives over a few months to spread the cost out, so I have time to think about it