WD NAS PR4100 - Expansion - Upgrade Drive Capacity

Question

I've searched on this topic for a while before I bought my new drives. First I tried cloning the drives; that didn't work. So I did the "preferred" method. Replace and rebuild each drive in order.

Step 1) Replace Drive 1; Do manual rebuild with new larger-capacity drive.
Step 2) Do step 1 on Drives 2, 3, 4. Done.
Step 3) All NEW Larger Drives are now in. Log in,
              Select: Storage > RAID > Change RAID Mode > Expansion.
              Change / Swap / Replace Drives?
              No. (because I just rebuilt all drives with new drives already)
Step 4) Wait a couple days for this operation to finish. A week of life already invested.

I did all these steps. And still, my WD NAS PR4100 reads my smaller RAID 5 total drive space.
I was "Warning 95% capacity", and still same capacity reading on new drives (4 x 18TB in RAID 5).

Each Drive's "Disk Status" registers as 18TB, but still in RAID 5, it reads 18.xxTB, with <1 TB?
I am now trying a second pass in Expansion.
I don't think this will work and already regret clicking the button to proceed.
Anyone experience this? I've rebooted also, so FYI.
HELP! Please and thank you!


In case there was confusion.
Old Capacity 4 x 6TB @ RAID 5 ~ 18TB storage
New Capacity 4 x 18TB @ RAID 5 ~ 18TB storage (still)
New Capacity should be around 18*3=54TB storage

Screen Shots: I can't show each step because I am attempting a second pass at Expansion.

These are my current Drives.


This is current.

These are the steps I took, after manual rebuilds on each Drive 1-4. An option would reveal itself to expand the capacity.





This is what should be as a result.

Answer 1

OK ... so here is a solution that is (was) hiding in plain sight from a lot of people (myself included) . In the process of expanding the volume size those who have run into a problem probably missed the following : There is another screen that one encounters along the expansion drive process, and anyone with a problem has not posted it (that I have found) . I think some people think it is simply an informational screen. In Raid 5, once that you have replaced the original drives with larger drives , (one at a time , and waited for each drive to be rebuilt before changing the next drive), go to the home screen and click on "change raid mode" and then you progress through the screens making your selections along the way ( you want to leave the raid mode as raid 5, and you want to indicate that you are NOT changing your drives because you have already done that ) , you will come to a screen with a slide bar on it that you use to indicate how much of the new capacity you want to use to expand your volume . The problem is that it doesn't look like a slide bar (or I didn't recognize it as a slide bar ) and if you don't slide that little blue indicator on the bar so that you move it to the right, and then you proceed with the drive expansion, you will end up with the same size volume that you started with . That is what I did the first time that I attempted to expand the size of my volume . I suspect that is the same mistake that others made as well. As I am writing this my PR4100 is in the process of the (correct) expansion process. I recall that two days ago I saw the screen that had the slide bar on it , but I didn't slide the bar . A couple of hours ago the PR4100 completed the expansion drive process that I attempted the first time ... and I ended up with the same size volume that I started with . I went through the steps again to expand the size of the volume (I started with 4 drives of 4 TB each ; I replaced them with 4 drives of 10 TB each) and this time I recognized that page with a slide bar on it for what it was (a page with a SLIDE BAR on it that I had to slide to the right to indicate how much of the unused space I wanted to include in the size of the expanded volume) . One final note : I saw that I also had the option to simply create a different volume using the unused space ... I read about the positives and negatives of doing that, and with a raid 5 configuration and a one person user, it didn't make sense to me to have more than one volume. Hope this answer helps . There are a few other Q and A's that I came across with similar issues as the one described here. I will try to find them and add my two cents.

Answer 2

What solved the problem:

WD NAS PR4100 Expansion

1. Backup all data.
2. Replace just the first new LARGER Drive into slot-1; closest to the Power Button. Let the NAS rebuild the drive and finish its task.
3. Login to your WD NAS, Select "Storage", Select "Change RAID Mode", Check "Expand Drives". Replace Drives? Select "YES".
4. Replace each drive, thereafter, until each drive is "rebuilt". ONE-AT-A-TIME, letting the WD NAS rebuild each one. You will be prompted when to add the next drive.
5. The WD NAS now will go into "Parity Test Mode" and correct all drives to the new expansion size. The red light may still be lit on Slot-1 after this. This will take a few hours depending on the size of your drives.
6. Reboot WD NAS via Login Screen on your PC.

--Notes:

So, it turns out there are many "solutions" out there. And if you are lucky, you will choose the correct "solution". In my case I went with a solution that wasn't correct. I got my solution in the forums of "Western Digital".

I bought a second NAS and used my 6TB Drives and backed up from my new drives back to the old drives. There was just too much data to lose, it was my cheapest option.

Another side note:

Cloning the smaller drive onto the larger drive does not work. After further investigation, I found that this maps the sizes of the partitions to the new drives as well. That may have been what caused the inability to adapt to the new larger drives. I used a external drive-bay to look at the partitions as the 6TB partition was the same partition sizes on the 18TB partition; of course with a larger end-partition with the extra ~12TB.

I also deleted the partitions on the 18TB drives before restarting this procedure as stated-in-steps above and performed a Quick Format on each as well.