Repartition RAID1 to extend/expand size to media size

[Sonuinrbrqes]

Hello, I upgraded my failed RAID1 from 6TB to 8TB by copying the old working  6TB drive's partition to the a new 8TB drive and then add the new drive to the old RAID1 and let the box recover for about 15 hours. I did the same on the 2nd disk and now have an 6TB RAID1 with 8TB media.

Now I want to use all of the disk media, but I'm hesitant to try the next steps.

1. Expand Partition - there is no option to expand both drive partions at once, so can I (first save the partition table) expand each drive one by one and retain my RAID and all my data?
2. or if ATL-F requires the RAID partitions to be identical, can I need to destroy the RAID1, expand each partition, keeping the data and then rejoin the RAID1?

After I get the Partition enlarged, the next steps should be easy, which are to expand the RAID1, and then finally the File System.

Also, I don't have a linux machine or really know how to use linux. I'm trying to do this all by Web GUI.

Can anyone comment if my assumptions are correct?

Here's my disk status for one drive.

md0 RAID Details

/dev/md0:
Version : 1.0
Creation Time : Sun Oct 2 01:36:37 2022
Raid Level : raid1
Array Size : 5859090896 (5587.66 GiB 5999.71 GB)
Used Dev Size : 5859090896 (5587.66 GiB 5999.71 GB)
Raid Devices : 2
Total Devices : 2
Persistence : Superblock is persistent

Intent Bitmap : Internal

Update Time : Tue Aug 19 14:39:13 2025 State : clean

Active Devices : 2
Working Devices : 2
Failed Devices : 0
Spare Devices : 0

Name : D-LINK_8CE02E_Y:0 (local to host D-LINK_8CE02E_Y) UUID : 57918be6:40b74a19:6989b151:d265db48 Events : 34497 Number Major Minor RaidDevice State 3 8 2 0 active sync /dev/sda2 2 8 18 1 active sync /dev/sdb2

/proc/mdstat:
Personalities : [linear] [raid0] [raid1] [raid6] [raid5] [raid4]
md0 : active raid1 sdb2[2] sda2[3]
5859090896 blocks super 1.0 [2/2] [UU]
bitmap: 0/11 pages [0KB], 262144KB chunk
unused devices:

and here is my partition information before making changes

Partition right disk, 8.0TB, WDC WD80EFZZ-68BTXN0
Using GPT partitioning.
Every internal disk must have a swap partition as its first partition, 0.5GB per 2TB disk is generally enough.
Keep Dev Start sector Length Size (GB) Type
sda1 64 2861056 1.465 swap
sda2 2861120 11718182064 5999.709 RAID
sda3 empty
sda4 empty
Free: 2000.389

[Thomas Bevilacqua]

Hi,

i think you are correct. 

Under the partitioner menù you have to uncheck the sda2 box and write the new size (7999.709), the write partion.

After do this you can copy this disk to the other ont he top of the page. 

Thne you can enlarge the filesystem from the Filesystem menù. 

If doesn't work you can make new raid from the wizard then copy from a pc or via usb data frome the 6TB disk in the new raid.

[Sonuinrbrqes]

Thanks Thomas.   

I haven't given extending partition a try yet, because the risk of failure; it takes 18 hours to copy disk to disk, i want to be careful. If all goes well, I should be up and running in a matter of minutes with 8TB access.  Or I could be facing days of copying.   I plan to find some old 3TB drives and experiment before trying this on critical data.  Saving, then clearing the partition table, and then restoring it if I make an error makes me hesitant.  Can I restore a saved partition table with Meta 1.2 data??.  One wrong move and I start over.  

The other worry are the warnings about large drive compatibility.  I don't understand the implications of the meta data, I'm not finding a good explanation.  The warning quote from another thread (related to converting a std file sys to RAID1) is " If using metadata version 1.1 or 1.2 your data will be lost."  Why and in what situations?  do I need to worry?

And if I can extend partitions of each half (after breaking RAID), the next worry is once they are individually extended, can I then rejoin to a RAID1 without having to mirror one of the drives?   Once they are rejoined, on a larger partition, the steps to enlarge the RAID should be straight-forward and fairly quick.   The file system expansion, last step, may take a while.   If the file system expansion time is long, 10's of hours, then you are right, i should just take the traditional approach and create a large empty raid, and copy data (18 hours each drive) and forget about all these work-arounds.

Mike