# Synology SHR vs RAID 5: Capacity, Expansion and Recovery

Canonical: https://cloudzat.com/synology-shr-vs-raid-5/
Full Markdown: https://cloudzat.com/synology-shr-vs-raid-5/index.md
Cluster context: https://cloudzat.com/ai/synology-technical/context.json

Purpose: Compare Synology SHR and RAID 5 for usable capacity, mixed drive sizes, expansion, one-drive fault tolerance, repairs and long-term NAS upgrades.
Direct answer: For equal-size drives and a stable array, RAID 5 is simple and easy to reason about. If you expect to replace disks gradually with larger capacities, SHR is usually the more flexible Synology-native choice because it can make additional space usable as enough larger regions become redundant.

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