Hardware/RAID question.

[thomaslivings]

Not sure this is the right place to ask, but I know 3d guys always know their tech!

I have a server in the studio which has 4 x 8Tb M.2 drives ($$$) in RAID10. I think. So that gives me 8Tb of fast and safe.
However, we back up everything to Dropbox. To expand my server, I want to disbale the RAID and use the drives individually.
Is this possible without wiping the drives? Is it difficult/delicate operation? Ive not done much with RAID. Just set it and forget it...
TIA,
Tom.

[Juraj]

You can technically dissolve Raid10 by removing 1 drive, or 1 drive from each groups (not two from one group though which would terminate all).
I highly suggest to avoid this route, there is reason why NAS/SAS devices usually don't allow downgrading to lower Raid type directly.

Do you also have any external backup? You should :- ) But even if you don't, get one, and transfer files to it. Then use that to rebuild future storage accomodation.
I would even advise forgetting RAID exists, or at least, RAID 0 :- ).

[Vuk]

I would also avoid this route because there is a potential for corrupt data. The safest solution to this would be to get a single big drive (which you might also use later for backup) and copy all data to that drive. Afterwards you can wipe all data on the M2 ssd's and start over with raid 5 or 0 since those raids will give you the biggest possible storage pool. Be careful with raid 0 though.

I used to run raid 0 with my m2 ssd's a few years back when they were much more expensive and I didn't have any issues for 2 years straight but after that I just reverted back to raid 5.
Now I just use 14tb hdd's in raid since I didn't find or experience any benefits from using ssd's over the 10gig network.