NAS Storage upgrade question

[S2Charlie]

I have a Qnap NAS (TS459 Pro) with 4 4 terabyte hard drives but I was planning to upgrade them one by one as they crap out to larger drives, then expqnd the array once they were all replaced. Is this possible? I checked Qnaps website and they describe the situation replacing them one by one, but all at once, and then rebuilding the array. Will the array be broken if I don't replace all the drives at the same time? I plan on using the same brand drives, just higher capacity.

 

[USAFRet]

I have a Qnap NAS (TS459 Pro) with 4 4 terabyte hard drives but I was planning to upgrade them one by one as they crap out to larger drives, then expqnd the array once they were all replaced. Is this possible? I checked Qnaps website and they describe the situation replacing them one by one, but all at once, and then rebuilding the array. Will the array be broken if I don't replace all the drives at the same time? I plan on using the same brand drives, just higher capacity.

Absolutely you can do this.
I did exactly the same with my Qnap TS-453A.

Started out with 4x 3TB drives, RAID 5. 9TB volume space.
Approx 6TB used space.

Bought 4x 4TB Seagate Ironwolfs
Replaced them 1 by 1. The array rebuilt itself in between each drive swap.
Upon replacement of the 4th drive, when the array finished rebuilding, it automatically resized to 12TB (10.6TB effective gibibytes)

Took about 6 hours to rebuild the array after each individual drive swap, so this took 2 or 3 days.

 

[S2Charlie]

USA, you misunderstood my question, I was planning on swapping drives gradually, over months or years as the original drives failed, and then expanding the array once they were all changed

 

[USAFRet]

NOTE: I did not try this hotswap. Supposedly it can do it, but I didn't.

Power off, swap a drive, power up and let the array rebuild.
And of course, I had a full backup of the whole volume, just in case things went south.

I tried it, just to verify to myself of "What specifically happens if an individual drive goes offline or dies?"

 

[USAFRet]

USA, you misunderstood my question, I was planning on swapping drives gradually, over months or years as the original drives failed, and then expanding the array once they were all changed

It would work the same way. Mine was just over a few days instead of months/years.
Assuming a RAID 5 with 4 drives, it wouldn't resize the array until that last larger one is installed.

If you're using some other configuration, it would act differently.
But adding in new, larger drives is not a problem. You just might not see the added size until they are all larger.

 

[S2Charlie]

USA it's either RAID 5 or 10, I'll have to check... but you answered my question and I will mark as best, thanks!