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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-321 => Topic started by: BlueBomber on September 16, 2009, 07:29:39 AM

Title: Do I have to format if I remove a mirrored RAID?
Post by: BlueBomber on September 16, 2009, 07:29:39 AM

Hey everybody - quick question.

I have two 500GB drives in my DNS-321 in a mirrored RAID. I'm running out of space, so I may temporarily throw them into individual drives (non-RAID) until I get the money for some 1.5TB drives or something similar.

Do I have to format the drives if I pull them out of a RAID configuration? I'm hoping that I can simply remove the RAID functionality since they are mirrored, and then format one of the drives so I can get 500GB more space.

Any idea?

Title: Re: Do I have to format if I remove a mirrored RAID?
Post by: gunrunnerjohn on September 17, 2009, 05:52:19 AM

I've never tried this, but I'm going to guess that you'll have to format them.


Remember: Data you don't have at least two copies of is data you don't care about.

Title: Re: Do I have to format if I remove a mirrored RAID?
Post by: ECF on September 17, 2009, 02:56:21 PM

I have not personal done this nor is this supported use of the DNS-321 but what you can do is:

If you remove a drive from RAID1 the remaining drive will remain as a standard volume in the unit so what you can do is You can pull one of you drives out then format the remaining drive as a standard drive. Then place the other drive in and it should be detected as a standard drive as well since it is not in sync with you other drive since it has been formated as standard and you should be left with two standard volumes.

Title: Re: Do I have to format if I remove a mirrored RAID?
Post by: gunrunnerjohn on September 17, 2009, 03:04:01 PM

Thanks, that's interesting for me to know as well.  That does appear to solve his issue, if it works.  ;)