Please take into account that this description is based on a new Synology NAS setup. The disks did not contain any data and this post was written to remove RAID after the initial setup finished with RAID active.
If you decide to follow the steps below with disks that contain data backup your data before and read the comments at the end of this post. Do it at your own risk.
A couple of weeks ago I bought a Synology DS218+ NAS with two 2TB WD Red disks. After the initial setup, I wanted to remove RAID on Synology DS218 since we use the NAS mostly for streaming films.
I am not deep into RAID configurations and this is my first Synology NAS. So it was not straight away clear how to remove RAID on Synology DS218. I did not want to waste 2TB of usable disk space so I started to dig.
If you initially choose an automatic setup ( as I have done ) your disks will be configured in RAID. To remove RAID I needed to remove the volumes, delete the storage pool, and set up the disks as individual disks.
To be able to delete the storage pool I needed to uninstall the Synology DSM packages that have been installed on the volume I wanted to remove first. The name of those packages is listed when you choose a volume and click remove in Storage Manager within the Volume tab.
Now delete the storage pool > Confirm with password
Create a new storage pool on each of your drives..
With a basic storage pool setup you can only choose Custom:
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Is crazy that there are no hints of this on Synology docs, neither in the forums anywhere.
Every time I saw questions on how to do this, answers where only “Why would you do this.. don’t do this”, no answer anywhere on how to just disable the xxxxxx raid.
I don’t need redundancy, I’m fine with losing data since those are already duplicate data, is data I can download again or that I have elsewhere. I just need space!
Thanks so much for your article… lost 3 hours trying to find what should be a simple option by default… so sad
Thank you for your comment on this Massi. Well appreciated!
I was exactly in the same situation. Bought my Synology to store files on it and stream films from it.
The important things are backed up in different other locations.
While setting it up I was unfortunately too fast and just clicked through the setup pages. I remember like there was a manual setup option as well at the beginning which I did not choose.
Setting it up without RAID was probably there.
You are right. The possibility to set it up without RAID or remove RAID straight away should be part of the docs.
… without any smart questioning 😉
thx mate.it helps me a lot.i really appreciate your work
Thx Cristian!
I wish you a peaceful and happy Christmas.
Regards
Sam
While do these action to remove RAID is there any data that will be deleted or lost?
Thanks so much!
Hi David,
When you remove RAID as described in this post you will lose your data. Since this was a setup with 2 brand-new disks losing data was not a problem in my case.
I googled a bit and it seems possible though. See the comment from caballo2000 on Nov 3, 2019 at 4:13 PM on a topic regarding this on Spiceworks:
https://community.spiceworks.com/topic/2240298-synology-nas-how-to-break-a-raid-1-without-losing-data
Honest opinion: I would not do it without a backup of my data. Maybe I am overcautious but it makes me sleep well.
Have a nice weekend.
Sam
Thank very much for this. Couldn’t find this info anywhere. I appreciate your professional presentation. I’ve got no time to wade through snarky comments.
Thank you, Jay!
I too want to remove Raid on my DS218+ Synology NAS, but first want to transfer/backup all the files I have on it. Should I try to use Synology or Plex software to accomplish this? (Or is this even possible) I have 16TB, two 8TB red drives in the NAS and can only use 8 TB with raid installed. I’m with everyone else, I just want more space, not redundancy. (After, of course, I back up everything).
Hello Jim,
I removed RAID straight away after I have set up my DS218+. So there was no need to backup my files. For this reason, I cannot say do it this way or do it the other way.
Triggered by your comment I have checked the possibilities within Package Center regarding backup software. The only thing I can say is how I would try to back up my files:
1.
The old school way. Copying the files to one or more disks on my computer or another local storage. ( provided you have enough storage )
or
2.
Within Package Center I found Hyper Backup. Since I never used it I cannot provide any information based on experience. So I am not sure how restore behaves when you only want to restore your backed up files without restoring any previous configuration ( after you have removed RAID )
Found this article:
https://kb.synology.com/en-uk/DSM/tutorial/How_to_back_up_your_Synology_NAS
https://kb.synology.com/en-global/DSM/tutorial/How_to_back_up_your_data_to_local_shared_folders_or_USB_with_Hyper_Backup
https://kb.synology.com/en-nz/DSM/help/HyperBackup/restore?version=6
At the end of the line, I would try it the old school way since it does not really matter if you make the copy or an application makes the copy. By copying the files manually in several batches you do not need to figure out how to restore your files with the backup software and do not face possible limitations.
Regards
Sam
Good to know article. Too bad it was not made more apparent as an option by the Synology user manual….
Finally an article which comes close with information I needed. Unfortunately my drive is now in degraded state (which is not(!) your fault, I decided to take the risk).
Luckily all my files are still accessible and I already have a huge server with lots of free space in… RAID configuration, so I don’t need that redundancy in my NAS. I backupped all my files overnight on it, so I can do anything to fix this.
At the moment the NAS has DSM version 7.1.1 and there was no Volume item. Maybe my configuration was different than yours and caused the degraded state of my NAS.
I try to take another steps and if it doesn’t work, I’ll start over from scratch (factory default) 🙂
Hi bassgun,
Sorry to hear that your drive is in degraded mode. I wrote this post straight after I bought my NAS in 2020. At that time it was on DSM 6.2.x ( I do not remember the exact version, but definitely DSM 6.2 ).
After I went through the initial setup the NAS was in RAID. But I had nothing to lose since I had no files on the disks. There were brand new.
Luckily you were able to backup your files. Should you start over from scratch I remember as if there was a manual setup option ( not that obvious it could have been ) at the beginning which I did not choose. Maybe there will be something similar on DSM 7 and hopefully, there will be an option to set it up without RAID.
Just write at the top of the article to back up data before removing RAID.
Thank you WebBanshee, I am in the process of doing it (creating the first Volume having created two Storage Pools, seems to take time)
Hello Mike,
Will do. Hope all went well.
I am so new to this I don’t yet even know how to transfer files to Synology 😀
Thanks for the article!
Hello
I need some help with this one.
I deleted my raid, and have made a storage pool for each of my drives (I have 2) and also made 1 volume for each storage pool. The issue is nog that when I look at file station, I only see video and music (guess these folders are made automatic) on storage 1. I can’t see the second drive.
Can someone help?
Thanks