This is one of those articles I’ve been meaning to post for a while, simply because I forget every time I do it how to do it properly. One way to expand the capacity of your QNAP NAS (non-disruptively) is to replace the drives one at a time with larger capacity drives. It’s recommended that you follow this process, rather than just ripping the drives out one by one and waiting for the RAID Group to expand. It’s a simple enough process to follow, although the QNAP UI has always struck me as a little on the confusing side to navigate, so I took some pictures. Note that this was done on QNAP firmware 5.0.0.1986.
Firstly, go to Storage/Snapshots under Storage in the ControlPanel. Click on Manage.
Select the Storage Pool you want to expand, and click on Manage again.
This will give you a drop-down menu. Select Replace Disks One by One.
Now select the disk you want to replace and click on Change.
Once you’ve done this for all of the disks (and it will take some time to rebuild depending on a variety of factors), click on Expand Capacity. It will ask you if you’re sure and hopefully you’ll click OK.
It’ll take a while for the RAID Group to synchronise.
You’ll notice then that, while the Storage Pool has expanded, the Volume is still the original size. Select the Volume and click on Manage.
Now you can click on Resize Volume.
The Wizard will give you information on the Storage Pool capacity and give you the option to set the new capacity of the volume. I usually click on Set to Max.
It will warn you about that. Click on OK because you like to live on the edge.
It will take a little while, but eventually your Volume will have expanded to fill the space.