How can I got about upgrading the internal drives and movinglater on? RAID rebuilding, or intermediary disks?  Also, whats the maximum drive capacity?

If I was to buy the 2TB version and set it up mirrored, and when space started getting a bit low later on I bought a pair of 2 or 3 TB hard drives to install in this, could I upgrade by simply swapping one of the 1TB drives for one of the new hard drives, letting the mirrored RAID rebuild, and then repeating with the other? Or to rebuild RAID mirrors require using only disks of the same capacity?

If rebuilding the array like that isn't possible, if I installed new disks in it and attached one of the 1TB disks via a separate enclosure, could I copy all the data across directly, even though its been taken out of the raid? Or would I need to copy all the data off the RAID only an alternate disk, and then install the new disks and copy the data back?

Any of these ways are doable for me, I'm just wondering how I'd go about it when the time comes. I really can't justify splashing out for the 6TB with my current income and capacity requirements, it would simply be unnecessary for the time being...

Also, (bonus question, more a musing than anything) is a pair of 3TB drives the maximum capacity the chipset will support?
I know that there pretty much aren't consumer 3.5 inch disks available over 3TB, but with recent advancements, we're likely to be seeing 4 and 5TB disk in the next two-three years, so are there any limiting factors in the RAID chip that would prevent future use of these drives?

Not that it is likely to matter, but if there isn't that limitation (as far as anyone knows at least), that would allow for quite a long lifetime for the device, whether or not it ever became used as such :P

• Asked by Anthony R from Wanniassa
• 10/02/2012