Add a Drive to Expand Storage Capacity
If there are empty drive slots on your DiskStation, you can install additional drives and add them to an existing volume or disk group. This article provides instructions to expand an existing volume or disk group by installing additional drives.
Before You Start
Before starting, make sure the drives that you want to add meet the following size requirements:
- For SHR: The capacity of the drive you wish to add must be equal to or larger than the largest drive in the volume or disk group, or be equal to any of the drives in the volume or disk group. For example, if your SHR volume is composed of three drives – 2 TB, 1.5 TB, and 1 TB respectively – then the capacity of the new drive must be at least 2 TB or equal to 1.5 TB or 1 TB.
- For RAID 5, and RAID 6, and RAID F1: The capacity of the drive you wish to add must be equal to or larger than the smallest drive in the volume or disk group. For example, if your volume is composed of three drives – 2 TB, 1.5 TB, and 1 TB respectively – then the capacity of the new drive must be at least 1 TB.
Check Volume Status
Make sure the status of your volume or disk group is Normal. If not, you must first repair it.
Add a Drive to a Volume or Disk Group
Hard drives can be added to the following RAID types:
- Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)
- JBOD
- RAID 5
- RAID 6
Note:
- For a SHR volume containing one drive, storage capacity will only be expanded when two or more drives are added.
To add a drive to a volume or disk group:
- Turn off your DiskStation. (Skip this step if your DiskStation supports hot-swapping.)
- Insert a new drive into an empty drive slot.
Note:
- To avoid harming yourself or damaging your DiskStation, please follow the drive installation instructions found in the Hardware Installation Guide for your Synology product.
- Turn on your DiskStation.
- Log in to DSM with an account belonging to the administrators group.
- Open Storage Manager.
- At this point, please do the following:
- If you are expanding a single volume, go to the Volume tab. Select the volume you wish to expand. Click Manage and continue to the next step.
- If you are expanding a disk group, go to the Disk Group tab. Select the disk group you wish to expand. Click Manage and continue to the next step.
- Select Expand the volume (or disk group) by adding hard disks. Then click Next.
- Select the drives with which you wish to expand the volume or disk group. You can add drives by checking the corresponding checkboxes. Then click Next.
- Follow the steps of the wizard to finish.