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I want to add a QNAP TL-D800C expansion enclosure to my existing QNAP TVS-h874-i7-32G NAS. My existing NAS is configured to only have one RAID and it's a RAID5. My question is this. Can I directly add the expansion drives in any way to be part of my existing NAS RAID5? The QNAP docs say the expansion enclosure has to have its own storage pool etc. which mans the enclosure must be its own storage area and RAID I assume. I want to add all of the new drives to my existing RAID. Can I do that and if so how? Thanks for your help.
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Unfortunately, you won't be able to directly add the drives from the QNAP TL-D800C expansion enclosure to your existing RAID5 array on the QNAP TVS-h874 NAS. Expansion enclosures like the TL-D800C typically function as independent storage units with their own RAID configurations and storage pools.
Unlike Synology NAS systems, which support expanding an existing RAID array with drives from an expansion unit, QNAP NAS devices do not allow you to directly add expansion drives to an existing RAID configuration.
However, QNAP does offer a feature called Virtual JBOD (VJBOD), which allows you to merge the storage capacity of multiple QNAP NAS units into a single storage pool. With VJBOD, you can create a virtual storage pool that spans across the drives in both your primary NAS and the expansion enclosure. While this doesn't directly add the expansion drives to your existing RAID array, it effectively combines the storage capacity of both systems into a single volume.
To utilize VJBOD, you would need to set up the TL-D800C expansion enclosure as a separate storage pool and RAID array, and then use the VJBOD feature on your QNAP TVS-h874 NAS to merge the expansion enclosure's storage into your existing storage pool.
While this approach doesn't provide the same seamless integration as Synology's expansion capabilities, it does offer a way to increase your overall storage capacity by combining the resources of multiple QNAP NAS devices.
