Process for re-using HDD

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Welcome to the NAS community! It's great to see you looking to repurpose your HDDs for your new setup. You're on the right track with your plan, but let's walk through the process to ensure everything goes smoothly.

First off, yes, you can indeed remove the drives from your 214 Play one by one and insert them into your 918+. When you do this, the 918+ will recognize them as new drives and prompt you to add them to your storage pool. During this process, the NAS will automatically format and integrate the drives into your SHR array.

Since your drives are currently in an SHR array (even though it's a mirror), there shouldn't be any issues with transitioning them to your new NAS. SHR is designed to be flexible and accommodate changes in drive configurations, so moving from RAID 1 to RAID 5 should work seamlessly.

Just make sure to double-check compatibility and ensure that all data is safely backed up before making any changes. Once you've inserted the drives into your 918+ and added them to your storage pool, you'll have additional capacity to play with!

Many thanks for a succinct and unambiguous reply!

I thought this was the case but wasn't brave enough to do it without someone more knowledgeable confirming

As soon as have finished my online backup I will grow the 918+ array with the old drives from my 214 Play

Thanks again

Just a quick note for anyone else with the same situation

Added each drive in turn. DSM noted the existence of a storage pool on each drive and checked that I was sure and warned about data deletion.  Added to the pool with no issues and more quickly than DSM predicted

Thanks again