I'm trying to increase the capacity of my LaCie 2big Triple, which I bought four years ago with two 500GB drives installed. Based on advice I read online, I removed one of the original drives, inserted a new 4TB WD Red drive, let the LaCie 2big take a day to "rebuild" the RAID pair (which is apparently supposed to copy some sort of LaCie OS software onto the new drive), and when that was finished I removed the remaining original 500GB drive. I am now left with just the (single) new 4TB drive in the LaCie 2big. I can use the LaCie 2big with the 4TB drive in it - I can save file so and open files from it. However, my Mac shows it as being a 500GB drive, just like the original drive that was in it. I have used Disk Utility to erase the drive, but the capacity does not change. Disk Utility's First Aid option reports that all is well with the drive. Can anyone suggest a way that I can now get my Mac and the LaCie 2big to recognize and use the full 4TB capacity of the drive that is now installed? Many thanks for any help you can offer!
Most likely the problem you are encountering is due to the RAID mode the device is set in. Most RAID arrays utilize multiple drives of the same size, or with drives of differing size, they just use a portion of the largest that matches the smallest drive. When the device rebuilt the array it partitioned off a portion of the 4tb drive of the same size as the existing 500gb drive. If you want to use full capacity of both drives you would need to use JBOD mode, which just strings the disks together into a storage pool using all available space. This won't offer the data redundancy of RAID1 or speed boost of RAID0, but should allow using full space.
Backup any vital data before doing anything, then look for a switch on the back. Rather than RAID0 or 1 the options may be labelled Safe or Fast, but JBOD is usually still labelled JBOD, or sometimes Big. You can try just flipping the switch to JBOD and seeing if it rebuilds to use all space. If that doesn't work you may need to remove the 4tb drive, connect it to a different system and erase it to get rid of the 500gb partition, then with the Lacie set to JBOD reinstall the 4tb drive so it will add its full size to the array.
The safest option though would be to buy another 4tb drive, backup all data and install both 4tb drives with the device set to RAID1/Safe. You would only get 4tb of total storage, but it would mirror the data on both drives so if one fails the other will still have your data. With JBOD you won't have any auto-backup. If a drive fails the data on it will be lost.
Dear "The Gink," thank you for your detailed reply. I changed the LaCie 2big to JBOD as you suggested, and then reformatted the disk with the Mac's Disk Utility. That gave me more capacity, 1.9TB, but still not the actual 4TB capacity of the installed drive. In looking at the original specs of the LaCie 2big Triple that I own, it appears that it was sold in three configurations: 1.0, 1.5 and 2.0 TB. So I'm guessing that the 2.0 TB limit is a fixed limitation they put into the RAID drive "housing," which makes it impossible to use the full capacity of a larger drive installed in it. So I think I'm going to give up on trying to upgrade this LaCie 2big. I'm going to put the original pair of 500GB drives back in it, use it as a 1TB drive as it was originally made to do, and I'm going to get a new and modern and more flexible housing for the 4TB SATA drive I just bought. Thanks for helping me get past the roadblock I had reached and for helping me realize I need to move on to a different approach.
Glad to help Paul. You're probably right about there being a hard limit to the maximum capacity for the device, that's unfortunate. Thanks for letting me know how it worked out. Cheers!
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SOURCE: Product: LaCie 2big quadra ((Professional 2-Disk
If the failed hard disk drive is replaced with the exact same capacity, RPM and make of hard drive, then the array can be rebuilt. Raid 0 cannot be rebuilt as each drive contains half of the data, If RAID 1 then can be rebuilt as data on each drive is an exact copy. However if combination of RAID 0 and RAID 1 then can be rebuilt. It's best really to handel this hands on, I recommend taking it to a computer technician especially if the information on it is important.
Thanking you
damnor01
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