[Windows-based NVRs] How to add drives to expand storage volume?

Question

How to add drives to expand storage volume?

This guide applies to the following NVR models:

• NR9581
• NR9681
• NR9682
• NR9782
• NR9581-V2
• NR9681-V2
• NR9682-V2
• NR9782-V2

Answer

If there are empty drive slots on your NVR, you can install additional drives and add them to an existing virtual drives. This article provides instructions to expand an existing storage pool by installing additional drives.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

• We suggest building a new RAID instead of using this method. Building a new RAID array is much faster and safer. The method in this article is only for the site which is not allowed any downtime.
• For your reference, 3x3TB HDD with RAID 5, if replacement to 6TB for all of three HDD, each HDD processing time might over 24 hour. For all process would need three days or more than one week to finished that would depend on I/O access.
  If your system have full 16 hard drives and want to replacement HDD to get more capacity, that might over a month to processing.
  So we would suggest to prepare second system with building new RAID and copy old data to this system will be more efficiently and could avoid during the expand processing other HDD lost/failed to cause data lost.
• Data backup: Although the expansion process will not delete any existing data, we strongly recommend backing up your data before proceeding.
• Virtual Drive Status: Before beginning, make sure the status of your virtual drive is Optimal. If not, you must first repair it.
• During the expand capacity processing is same of stage of RAID rebuilding, if lost HDD and over the RAID level tolerance/buffer it will cause RAID failed/data lost.
• Is data still accessible during expansion? Recording on your system will be available and the NVR will keep recording while expanding storage.
• The procedure described in this article applies to the following RAID types only: RAID0, RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6.
  Expanding RAID 0, you require a minimum of 1 drive. 
  Expanding RAID 1, you require a minimum of 2 drives. 
  Expanding RAID 5, you require a minimum of 1 drive. 
  Expanding RAID 6, you require a minimum of 1 drive.
  RAID10 cannot be expanded.
• We recommend using drives in the Supported HDD List of your product to prevent any issues. Using incompatible drives may lower the system performance or even cause data loss on your NVR. You can find the list on the product website. For example, if you want to check the support list of NR9681, you can go to: https://www.vivotek.com/nr9681#support
• If you plan on replacing multiple drives, you must be careful to replace drives one-by-one. After replacing one drive, you must wait for the rebuild process finish before replacing the next one. 

Add a Drive to a Virtual Drives
The change of RAID type is not mandatory. For example, if you have RAID1 array with two 4TB disks and you want to add two more 4TB disk to this array, the RAID type can be change to RAID5 with 12TB volume or you can stay with RAID1 but expand the volume to 8TB. In this example, we will migrate RAID1 array to RAID5 array.

1. Power off your NVR. (Although NVR supports hot-swapping, we still recommend doing this step to keep the data safe. You can skip this step if you want the NVR keep recording.)

2. Insert a new drive into an empty drive slot.

3. Power on your NVR and launch MagaRAID Storage Manager.

4. Select the virtual drives you wish to expand. Then right-click Modify Drive Group from the Drive Group drop-down menu.

5. Select the RAID level you want to migrate.

6. Select the drive you are going to add. 

7. Confirm the settings.

8. Click Finish to reconstruct. This process may take multiple days. You can check the home page for the status.

9. Launch Disk Management. You will find a new unallocated volume.

10. Right click on the current partition, and click Extend volume...(You also can right click on the disk to create a new volume if you want to have a new volume.)

11. Follow the steps of the wizard to finish.