Synology SHR adding drives DS920+ and expanding volume

[Enquiries]

Seasonal Greetings

I have a DS920+, with 3 x 8TB Ironwolf's. I am starting to fill it faster than I thought I would. My current load will not fit on only 2x8 drives (7.8 TB 55% used). If I add a 20TB drive, I know I will only get 8TB of it, but if later I remove one of the 8TB drives, then add another 20TB drive, can I expand the volume to use the full 20TB (resulting in 32tb - the Synology raid calculator only goes to 18tb so I wonder if 20tb is even an option) Or am I stuck in the this 8TB per drive world. I do have 4TB of external SSDs which I can pull stuff off the NAS if reducing to 2 drives and then adding the 20TB drives would solve this. I have a local 14TB external HDD backup of the NAS and an off-site so I am not too worried about the risk of moving stuff to SSDs for a few days while the volume rebuilds

Hope this makes sense.

Best regards
Neale

[ed]

Season's greetings, Neale! You've got a solid setup with the DS920+ and your storage configuration. Now, regarding your expansion plans, Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR) is indeed flexible. If you add a 20TB drive to your current mix, it will be utilized at the 8TB capacity of the other drives. However, the good news is, when you later replace one of the 8TB drives with another 20TB drive, you can then expand the volume to utilize the full 20TB. SHR allows for this dynamic expansion and flexibility in managing your storage over time. So, yes, your idea of starting with the 20TB, swapping an 8TB with another 20TB, and expanding the volume to reach 32TB is feasible. It's a smart move to leverage your external SSDs to manage data during this process. If you have any more questions or need further guidance, feel free to reach out. Cheers!