About a year and a half ago, I purchased an ORICO 5 Bay Raid Enclosure (3559RU3), which I filled with 3 Seagate 16TN Exos (st16000nm001g) set up as a Raid 5. I just purchased a Seagate IronWolf Pro 20TB (ST20000NT001) that I would like to add to it.
The whole set up is being used as both 30 years of data storage, and also a Plex server. I know I should have probably gotten a NAS, but I didn't, so I'm doing my best working with what I got.
I am very worried that I'm going to screw something up and lose 29 TB of data, so before I do anything, I wanted to ask a few questions.
My questions are:
- Is it possible add the drive to the RAID 5 configuration, without having to wipe everything out and start over?
1b) And if, that is possible, is that a smart idea?
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If the answer to either of the above is no, is there anything that I need to do to just add the 4th drive to the bay to act as a "2nd" drive?
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Since this is being used as a Plex server, would it make more sense to transfer all the data from the 3 drive RAID to the new drive, then reformat the RAID drives to individual and reclaim the redundant drive for more space? (This option would result in no backup)
Sorry if these seem like simple questions... I set this up a while ago and I don't remember exactly how or what I did, and don't want to mess anything up. I appreciate any help!