WD 5TB and 6TB compatibility for UNRAID.

My Unraid system has filled to maximum and I would like to replace current 4TB disks to new 6TB disks in future. Is this possible with my hardware?

Asus B75M-LE motherboard

Pentium 2.9Ghz LGA1156

8GB Ram

6 x 4TB WD Red

Unraid 5.0.5

Users have reported success with 5TB drives, haven't seen any reports of 6TB drives. 

Some users have also reported that manufacturers of external enclosures appear to be intentionally breaking compatibility between the drive/sata interface if the drive is removed from the external enclosure.

There shouldn't be any issue with 5TB/6TB drives. There is a "barrier" at 2TB, which was addressed with 5.0, but there are no further "barriers" with any of today's drives. You should be able to handle any drive sizes without issue.

With that said, sureguy has a point in that external drives are a bit of a crapshoot. I haven't seen the specific issue he mentions, but I've had issues where a hidden HPA will cause the disk to appear slightly smaller than expected. This is primarily an issue if you are planning on replacing your parity disk. I would definitely only buy an internal disk for parity, and then you can take your chances on externals for data if you so choose.

Just of curiosity, why would anyone want to use external drives and reuse them internally for the array? Since external drives are slightly more costly.

Just of curiosity, why would anyone want to use external drives and reuse them internally for the array? Since external drives are slightly more costly.

Often times you can find external (large capacity) drives at prices cheaper than bare drives.  Sometimes you can get the high capacity drives in enclosures before you can find bare drives of the same size.  I know Costco used to carry drives in enclosures that were cheaper than bare drives, and many other retailers would carry drives as loss leaders/door crashers.

Your system will work fine with 6TB drives.    I would not, however, buy external drives and pull the units out ... just not worth the potential warranty risk for the small potential savings.