Add a Hard Drive to a Volume or Disk Group

Add a Hard Drive to Expand Storage Capacity

If there are empty hard drive slots on your DiskStation, you can install additional hard drives and add them to an existing volume or disk group. This article provides instructions to expand an existing volume or disk group by installing additional hard drives.

Before You Start

Before starting, make sure the hard drives that you want to add meet the following size requirements:

For SHR: The capacity of the hard drive you wish to add must be equal to or larger than the largest hard drive in the volume or disk group. For example, if your SHR volume is composed of three hard drives – 2 TB, 1.5 TB, and 1 TB respectively – then the capacity of the new hard drive must be at least 2 TB.

For RAID 5 and RAID 6: The capacity of the hard drive you wish to add must be equal to or larger than the smallest hard drive in the volume or disk group. For example, if your volume is composed of three hard drives – 2 TB, 1.5 TB, and 1 TB respectively – then the capacity of the new hard drive must be at least 1 TB.

Check Volume Status

Make sure the status of your volume or disk group is Normal. If not, you must first repair it.

Add a Hard Drive to a Volume or Disk Group

Hard drives can be added to the following RAID types:

Synology Hybrid RAID (SHR)

JBOD

RAID 5

RAID 6

Note:

For SHR volumes, storage capacity is only expanded when adding hard drives to a volume with two or more hard drives.

To add a hard drive to a volume or disk group:

Turn off your DiskStation. (Skip this step if your DiskStation supports hot-swapping.)

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

Note:

To avoid harming yourself or damaging your DiskStation, please follow the hard drive installation instructions found in the Quick Installation Guide for your Synology product.

Turn on your DiskStation.

Open Storage Manager.

At this point, please do the following:

If you are expanding a single volume, go to the Volume tab. Select the volume you wish to expand. Click Manage and continue to the next step.
If you are expanding a disk group, go to the Disk Group tab. Select the disk group you wish to expand. Click Manage and continue to the next step.

Select Expand the volume (or disk group) by adding hard disks. Then click Next.

Select the hard drives with which you wish to expand the volume or disk group. You can add hard drives by checking the corresponding checkboxes. Then click Next.

Follow the steps of the wizard to finish.