NSA325 v2 upgrade to maximum RAID1 capacity

dottore

Hello, I have an NSA325 v2 with the latest firmware. It is currently running in RAID1 with two identical 2TB Seagate hard drives. I want to upgrade the storage capacity to the maximum possible, which I believe is 6TB in RAID1. My questions are:

1. What is the largest disk drive I can put in the internal slots of NSA325 v2?
2. Does it matter what brand it is? Is there any experience with drives that work, but others that will not?
3. What is the exact procedure to do this. What may go wrong? Should I backup my files first?

Thanks!

#NAS_Apr_2019

Rory

zyxel nsa325 v2 hdd compatibility table:
http://il.zyxel.com/ProductTab.shtml?pid=20150327120001&idx=3&c=gb&l=en

procedure:
The steps as below:

1. Power off NSA325v2

2. Plug-out disk2(1T HDD)

3. Plug-in 6T HDD as disk2

4. Repair the RAID1

5. Repair finish

6. Power off NSA325v2

7. Plug-out disk1(1T HDD)

8. Plug-in 6T HDD as disk1

9. Repair the RAID1

10. Repair finish

11. Expand volume to 6T

Moreover, my suggestion is backup your files first.

dottore

Thank you very much! So, I see only WD60EFRX(RED) offers 6TB capacity. This is quite restricting, thankfully this drive still appears to be available.

Mijzelf

https://homeforum.zyxel.com/discussion/comment/4109#Comment_4109

And I'm not aware of any limitation for the 325, up to the 16GiB volume limitation for ext3. Although it's comfortable to not pass the 8TB frontier, as you then enter the next power of 2 (seen from 6TB)

Rory

zyxel nsa325 v2 hdd compatibility table:
http://il.zyxel.com/ProductTab.shtml?pid=20150327120001&idx=3&c=gb&l=en

procedure:
The steps as below:

1. Power off NSA325v2

2. Plug-out disk2(1T HDD)

3. Plug-in 6T HDD as disk2

4. Repair the RAID1

5. Repair finish

6. Power off NSA325v2

7. Plug-out disk1(1T HDD)

8. Plug-in 6T HDD as disk1

9. Repair the RAID1

10. Repair finish

11. Expand volume to 6T

Moreover, my suggestion is backup your files first.

dottore

Thank you very much! So, I see only WD60EFRX(RED) offers 6TB capacity. This is quite restricting, thankfully this drive still appears to be available.

Mijzelf

https://homeforum.zyxel.com/discussion/comment/4109#Comment_4109

And I'm not aware of any limitation for the 325, up to the 16GiB volume limitation for ext3. Although it's comfortable to not pass the 8TB frontier, as you then enter the next power of 2 (seen from 6TB)

Brian Hall

Thanks for your replies. Given that Zyxel look like they will discontinue the NAS device completely in the not too distant future, I am now looking at other manufacturers. I know my NSA325 with its two 3TB drives is out of support but they won't even entertain answering a very simple question for me that I have been unable to find a reliable answer to. That is what is the maximum size hard drive I can put in it? I'm not asking for support but they don't want to know - and that puts me right off them.

Mijzelf

What kind of answer did you expect? They tested the box with 6TB disks, (biggest disks available, that time) but that's not an answer on your question. Everything beyond that is guessing. I can tell you that I expect disks up to 16TB are fine, but I won't guarantee that. A yet unknown bug might be triggered by bigger disks.

If they give you the same info, you wouldn't accept an expectation, would you? Yet they can't give a better answer without intensive (expensive) testing, and so they tell you they don't know, or cannot answer the question.