Can I just swap newer (ie: higher capacity) HDDs into my LaCie 2Big External Drive?

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Hello,

I have an older LaCie, 2Big, 6TB (2x3TB), Raid (capable) External Hard Drive.
It is currently set to Raid 0, so it's just essentially 2 HDDS in an external casing.

I've seen YouTube videos where people just switch out the drives for newer, higher capacity drives (but only saw it then connected to a PC, not a Mac).

Is it as easy as that...just buy 2 higher capacity, same manufacturer drives, swap them in, and boot up the External Drive/Enclosure and it'll work....my iMac will see the "LaCie" as a (hopefully, now) 10 TB external drive?

If not, why not, and what else would be involved to accomplish this?

Is there a max (per bay) capacity I'd be limited to, and if so, how would I find out what that is?

Also, somebody in one of the videos said that I had to buy the same manufacturer and model or else the drives wouldn't be recognized upon mounting..is that true?

Thanks,

J.
 
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2023-14" M3max MBPro, 64GB/1TB, iPhone 15 Pro, Watch Ultra
Well I have done this with my Synology Storage - which has 4 drives set as a RAID 5. This storage device is on a network and can be accessed by both Windows and Mac computers. It has its’ own operating system which means it does not matter how the drives are format, the OS on the storage device takes care of communicating between the different OS.

I suspect your Lacie’s onboard OS also does this too. So I imagine if you swap a drive out it will configure it and start storing data on it. Check out this link which is the operator’s manual for your storage plus it has a link to compatible drives for your Lacie system.

LaCie 2big Dock Thunderbolt 3 User Manual - Hard Drive Maintenance

Also I do see that the only RAID options you have are 0, 1, or 2. Currently you are using RAID 0 which offers no data protection and if you loose one disk you loose all your data as it is set to stripe data between the two drives. You might consider when you purchase your new drives going for identical in size larger capacity disks and using RAID 1 which would duplicate your data between two drives - although it reduces your storage by 50%. Big advantage is if you loose a drive the other one has your data. Just an idea.

Lisa
 

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