Synology Hard Drive Replacement to a Bigger One

I will show you how I replaced a hard drive in my Synology NAS from a smaller drive to a larger one.
#synology #synologynas #synologyharddrive
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[@nerddadtech]

Questions about Synology? Let me know in the comments below!

[@nerddadtech]

Also I would love to hear your feedback

[@MURDERTR4IN]

Any idea if I need to leave the PC running while it is doing the repair? Cheers mate

[@jayone8891]

Hi, sorry this is an old vid but I was wondering if synology would rebuild video files when replacing a drive?

[@nerddadtech]

@@jayone8891 It rebuilds everything you have stored on the drive including video!

[@jayone8891]

@@nerddadtech Legend! thankyou! Subbed

[@rpaarlberg]

As a former UNIX Admin, DBA, programmer, and ultimately CIO, I really appreciate your video. It gives a great deal of comfort to see someone pull a hot drive out of a NAS. The time estimates were incredibly valuable to curb any sense of "why is it taking so long". Well done Bunkies!

[@nerddadtech]

Thanks! I will say that playing anything out of an electronic device while it is on can make you anxious the first time around

[@KarriePorterBond]

Super helpful! I have never hot swapped a drive before but was completely out of space and had no choice. Even with Synology support telling me I could do this, I don't think I would have been confident enough to pull the drive if I had not seen you do it first. Lol. I have the exact same model, which has been going strong for about 3 years now, but it was time for an upgrade. What is kind of a bummer is I'd just added the last 6TB drive in the 5th bay only a few months ago but ate that up quickly (professional photographer...we go through storage like crazy). BH was running a sale on a set of two 16TB drives so I'll now have three 6TB and two 16TB, so that should hold me over for a while....at first the unused space is quite a lot due to the configuration, but after it's done repairing this first drive, then I'll pull the second one and put the other 16TB in and then I won't have any unused space. Anyhoo, long way of saying "thanks for doing this video!"

[@nerddadtech]

Thanks for letting me know!

[@WBRawlings]

Very refreshing description, economical and clear explanation of the process and actions involved. Appreciate you sharing your knowledge and experience. Thank you.

[@nerddadtech]

thanks

[@RiaanOpperman]

I am very happy I found this Video as I wanted to know how to manage and replace drives which is different sizes. All the videos I saw so far are all the same sizes. I don't have a lot of money and I am leading towards a 4 bay NAS (Synology DS420+) with 3 x 4TB drives rather than a 2 bay NAS (Synology DS220+) with 2 x 8TB drives as I believe it will work out cheaper in the long run.

[@nerddadtech]

It should be cheaper. I think four bays is the minimum for future proofing.

[@jehinote]

Thank you! most helpfull video I've seen on this!

[@TerryMurrayTalks]

Thanks for the video it was very useful in particular the confidence you have in WD's support and warrantee. Like your relaxed presentation style.

[@nerddadtech]

thanks

[@CharlesLScofieldJr]

Talk about timing with me seeing your video. I have a Synology DS1819+ that I am in the process right now of swapping out my last two 12TB WD Reds in my NAS. When it is finished I will have all eight drives with 14TB WD Reds. This will likely be my final upgrade to the system. The two 12TB drives will probably be placed into my PC that is my primary Plex Server since they are less than a year old. I knew that the NAS had hot-swap capability but what I did was go into Storage Manager and deactivate the drive first and then pulled out the drive to be replaced. The only difference between your method and mine was the deactivation step. You are right it does take quite a while to complete the whole operation. I pulled mine yesterday and the parity consistency is only at 76% , once it is finished then I get to start all over again to replace the final drive.

[@nerddadtech]

14tb Reds for a huge amount of space. Thanks for the great comment and for watching my video.

[@CharlesLScofieldJr]

@@nerddadtech Yes, according to the Synology Raid calculator it is supposed to give me about 96TB of space. But when I replaced some of the drives a while back. DSM creates some weird partitions on the drives. The drives I pulled out to reuse in my Plex Server. I had to use my paid copy of Acronis Disk Director 12.5 to safely remove all the partitions and then repartition them to NTFS and then reformat them.

[@VideoNOLA]

At $400 a pop, that array would have set you back $3200 just for the drives. I'm sure that's not even on the high end of what some enthusiasts spend, but wow that seems like a lot to me. Makes you wonder what an individual might shell out over a lifetime of digital hoarding vs. investing that money into wealth building.

[@mikemcdonald5147]

recently pulled a 12 tb drive out of mine that went bad replaced with a 16tb all other drives are now 16tb took less than a day to redo. It was 5pm and when i came back to computer at 10am it was all good so finished some time over night. I have a total of 8 drives in my older ds2015xs 8 bay drive. i do have the 8 gig update ram i added.

[@PatrickBijvoet]

Just a question. Although I have my Synology for less then a year (DS1522+) populated with 5 times 12tb seagate ironwolf drives, when I want to upgrade to 5 times 16 e.g., I can do that by doing this proces too? But then 5 times?

[@AllynVibes]

Hi, I have a DS920+ no raid with 4 6TB drives. One is almost full and I have a larger drive to upgrade to. How can i replace the one drive with the new larger drive? I don't see the replace option, I was thinking to use and just remove one of the other drives to do it then put it back. I'm also thinking i should have done aome form of RAID, yet I liked being able to keep certain drives for certain purposes and keep maximum HD capacity. This may have made this process easier... Any help would be greatly appreciated.

[@waleedkh9769]

I have Synology NAS and I want to replace all disks with new ones. What is the best way to do it?

[@packrattogo]

Great video....walks through the process very clearly, concisely and accurately. QUESTION: I'm in the process of replacing 3Tb disks with 8Tb on an SHR storage pool in my 8-disk NAS. I've replace 3 of the 6 so far, one at a time, and each repair has gone smoothly. But my capacity has not expanded at all....still the same as when it was six 3Tb drives. Am I missing something?

[@1420MHZ]

You're using the original volume size, you need to go into settings and max it out.

[@VideoNOLA]

I thought the Synology Docs specifically state that the array will size to the equivalent of the smallest drive contained therein. Could be wrong, but that's what I remember reading (yesterday).

[@nerddadtech]

@@VideoNOLA Are you using SHR?

[@zarilnazri]

@@1420MHZ how to?

[@SmallSpoonBrigade]

@@nerddadtech That's normally how that works, or you have some data that isn't redundant. If you're mixing different sizes of disks, that JBOD, and there's no redundancy involved, or at least some of the data isn't protected.

[@user-zy6qe7yn7r]

I know I am commenting 9 months after you posted this but I am interested in the Noctua fan upgrade if you are willing to do a video on it.

[@nerddadtech]

Possibly they are still doing great!

[@muhamadiksan3975]

great video!! i have a question, so im using synology ds920+ 4x2tb and already full capacity and now im about to buy 4x8tb, for the first step i just need to remove old drive from the nas random slot? and just put the new 1 and repair 1 by 1?? thank you

[@nerddadtech]

You can also back up the whole array and then transfer it to the new setup but this isn't always the case. You swap them out one by one and wait for them to rebuild. It can take a really long time but it is worth at the end.

[@Mopsie]

Thanks! This gave me some peace of mind. This also works with just upgrading right?

[@nerddadtech]

Yes

[@VideoNOLA]

Unfortunately, if your current disk volume is formatted ext3 or ext4 and were hoping to create a new volume as BTRFS, Synology Support says it cannot be done. You will have to backup all your NAS data to an external location, replace the drives (or delete/recreate the volume on existing drives), then copy your backup data back to the NAS. Too bad hot-swapping wouldn't accomplish this, but them's the facts.

[@nerddadtech]

This is a pain but true

[@ZakiWasik]

I have Synology 920+ with 4x 6TB WD Red Soho drives in SMR configuration. I'm close to my capacity limit and I'm considering upgrading with a single either 14TB or 18TB drive. Should I expect any problems as a result of running such a big disparity between my drives capacity (i.e. 3x 6TB and 1x 18TB). Also, the 6TB drives are 5400RPM. The new drive I'm looking at would be 7200RPM. Would the slow drives cap the entire system to 5400RPM or how does that work?

[@nerddadtech]

Mixing HDDs with be differences works but you lose DD space overall. I recommend checking out the Synology RAID calculator to see how removing and adding different sizes helps. www.synology.com/en-us/support/RAID_calculator

[@dencio452]

Great tutorial, While replacing the bad drive does the drive or LUN is still usable?

[@nerddadtech]

No you have to wait for the rebuild

[@harpersneil]

You had to kill the power after adding the drive?? I would have been absolutely bricking it! Happy to hear it worked out for you in the end - thanks for the video.

[@nerddadtech]

It scared me but worked

[@riky2390]

Have an 1812+ with (3) 3TBs and (3) 4TBs - all WD Red CMR, using SHR. Replaced one of the 3’s with a new 4TB. Went through the parity consistency for 24 hours + … and is now doing it again. At it’s current speed… looks to be another 24 hours. Did I miss something?

[@nerddadtech]

I know this comment is late but I have had it go longer. I finally reached out to support and they said to restart it. I was scared to death that I would loose it all but it went back to work and finished in 10 mins or so.

[@januza]

i have some UNC error codes on my Drive 4. I bought a new bigger driver. I use Synology SHR on my DS214play. All 4 bays are used. Do I need to update the drive 4 that has an error or can I just replace it without data lost ?

[@nerddadtech]

You can replace it with the new drive. From there, Synology SHR will rebuild

[@aaronjones8148]

Very useful video. I am about to upgrade 2 x 4TB to 2 x 6TB to take my SHR to 5 x 6TB. I will obviously do 1 drive at a time and await rebuild?

[@nerddadtech]

One at a time works and its great to have a backup of the whole drive as well.

[@shadowwalker9000]

Hey, I have a DS1520+ with 5- 4TB drives running as SHR-1 with Drive 1&2 are Seagate iron wolf pro 4TB , drive 3,4,&5 are Seagate Skyhawks 4TB . drives are fine ,but want to replace the 3 with 3 more Iron Wolf Pro 4 TB . So I can just replace one at a time and do a repair to format and load date back. And then do the next a day later and so on I’m not in any hurry, just don’t want to start from scratch like a new install , Drives aren’t that full about 4TB out of 14.5 TB usable space.

[@turifster]

What would be the method if there are not free bays? If you just want to change the drive to a bigger one? And of course you want to copy somehow the content of the previous drive?

[@josharmour]

I have the ds1621xs+ and am looking to do this with my shr volume (you can enable SHR by editing a config file).. I think its tough because I am using all 6 drives and I"m nearly full. So I have to do a swap and rebuild one at a time I think. I am moving all my drives from 8tb to 12tb because my 8tb drives are SMR - I didn't realize when I set this up. So I'll take drive one out and put in the CMR 12tb and let it rebuild, then do the second drive after it rebuilds. At some point I'll be able to take out two drives and put in the new one, maybe after three drives are replaced and I have another 12 tb of space - matching the new drives.

[@nerddadtech]

I've looked at getting a 1621xs+ has an upgrade but I haven't yet. Upgrading can be a pain when all the drive bays are taken but you have the right idea.

[@Hangvogel]

Hi there, I am quite a newbie on this. I once bought a NAS DS713+ and it is now a decade old. Never swapped the harddrives until now. I read you should replace them once in a while before failing. What I don’t understand: there is data on those drives (ofcourse a backup on the second drive). How can you make sure that the data on the current drive is transferred to the new drive(s)????

[@nerddadtech]

The rebuild takes care of all of this

[@brandonstews238]

Ok so I have 4 new 14tb drives in the mail. Upgrading from my 6tb drives. I have a usb back up with 13tb on it (all the data). Would it be quicker to swap one drive at a time or just pull the bandaid and rebuild the complete pool from the back up? Ds920+

[@packrattogo]

Each drive will take about 12+ hrs to repair. Do one in the morning and one before you go to bed for two days, and it'll be done quickly. Rebuilding, on the hand, provides a good opportunity to make any desired changes in RAID type, volumes, storage pools, or file system.

[@packrattogo]

Another key difference: Your NAS is functional during repair, but not during rebuilding.

[@brandonstews238]

@@packrattogo thank you for the response! I pulled the trigger on sat, it took 30 hrs to transfer 11tb. Did all 4 from back up! It’s up and running and synology has done a great job with backups.

[@MURDERTR4IN]

@@packrattogo do I need to leave PC on after adding new drive and the NAS is repair?

[@packrattogo]

@@MURDERTR4IN No. Once the repair is underway, the PC isn't involved.

[@WBRawlings]

Plan: Getting a second Synology NAS (ds920+). Will use older NAS (ds916+) to back up new NAS (ds920+). Trying to find a 8TB enterprise hard drive that would function as a "cold spare" for both 916+ and 920+. Problem: Synology compatibility list has a different set of hard drives for each. Question: What are the risks of using a hard drive as a cold spare for both 916+ and 918+ when the hard drive is only tested as compatible for one or the other?

[@nerddadtech]

Should be fine

[@sylvainalain6637]

I plan to get the ds1621+ that support shr and way cheaper then the XS model :)

[@nerddadtech]

Great idea! All depends on what your using it for.

[@shanejackson7618]

Does all the HDD have to be the same size?

[@nerddadtech]

Not on this unit. If you have SHR you can use mixed sizes.

[@mab1776]

If my storage pool is 90% full, can I replace one of my 5 8TB drives with an 18TB?

[@nerddadtech]

Yes but are you using SHR?

[@planfire]

I have one questions, when you rebuild the drive for 24 hours, can you shut down the beeping noise?

[@nerddadtech]

Log into the DSM, go to control panel and search for beep. There will be a button to turn off the beep

[@Cilantrose]

10:30 is the bookmark you want

[@nerddadtech]

Good idea

[@perrudidanielsen2014]

Isnt the max size 3TB disk. Ref Synology Datasheet

[@nerddadtech]

I am not sure what the datasheet says but I have larger than 3TB

[@hangc10]

purchased with your own money? lolz; everything we saw on your video is purchased with your money lolz... btw, thanks for sharing the video; this be a great help!

[@nerddadtech]

Thanks!

[@nothingcaremate]

Ummmm I read lots of article and papers. Even that, I am still no idea. I want to keep the data of the nas at a hdd, at then replace with a new, blank hdd.The data is Not needed to keep at nas. So, All I need to do is to do the replacement and nothing else? oh I forgot the "safe eject", I can't find it even they are healthy

[@nothingcaremate]

oh I find the problem. The hdd has packages so I can't safe eject

[@nerddadtech]

You need to turn off the unit unless it supports hot swapping

[@smeado3533]

Stupid question. Can you shut down the computer while the repair is going and let the NAS do its thing?

[@MURDERTR4IN]

@smeado How did you go? I am about to do the same thing, and wondering if I need to leave my PC on?

[@smeado3533]

@@MURDERTR4IN You've got me. Nobody ever answered.

[@nerddadtech]

I believe you can shut down your computer but I haven't tried or done a repair in a long time.

[@MURDERTR4IN]

@@nerddadtech yes you can shut PC down once repair is started.

[@VideoNOLA]

I'm all for talking with your hands, but not if you're holding a hard drive at the same time. I think they respond better to incredibly careful handling, which means wearing an anti-static wrist strap and making no sudden moves.

[@nerddadtech]

IT survived!

[@Mark_Chandler]

thing is, you can still use the nas while it is rebuilding

[@nerddadtech]

Yes but it slows down

[@nerddadtech]

you can but it can be super slow

[@nerddadtech]

good call

[@markgarcia8253]

Too much filler talking rather than information. Nevertheless very helpful

[@nerddadtech]

Well I like to talk

[@Dexter101x]

You should write a script for your video, because it seems that you have a lot of idle talking, and also you keep saying "it will take a while", as if no one knows that