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Forum Discussion
Dewdman42
Aug 26, 2025Virtuoso
Can I shelf a JBOD volume for later?
I have it in my mind to use drive bay #4 as a JBOD brtfs backup drive. Primary RAID1 will be in drive bays 1,2. I may have also an additional JBOD drive3 with intentionally non-raided data. The...
- Sep 01, 2025
Sorry for the late reply, I've been having login issues.
The warning saying it's going to destroy the volume when you intend to export, not destroy, is a programming error -- it points to the wrong warning or is a bad cut-and-paste by the programmer, as it's identical to the one when you are actually destroying a volume. But it does do an export. I reported the error long ago and was ignored.
If you forget to EXPORT the JBOD volume, you can boot with just that drive. It will show the main volume as "missing" and apps and such won't work, but your JBOD data will be accessible. That works because the OS partition is duplicated on every drive. But that does mean that any changes you make to the NAS after removal (like a password change), won't be there. At that point, you should back up all the files. Alternately, you can then EXPORT it (though any other time, exporting the only volume is a really bad idea). Once you do the export, it won't boot by itself again, but it will import to another volume. Thus, backing up the files before doing the export is the best practice, just in case something goes wrong with the export or import. If something were to happen to your main volume that prevents importation, you could simply create a new one with a single drive and do the import to it (which is also how you recover from an inadvertent export of the main volume)
I have not figured out what marks a volume as exported so you can undo it by a method other than import to another ReadyNAS or mark it is exported outside ReadyNASOS.
One thing to keep in mind with export/import is that there can be no volume or share names the same on the imported volume as on the main one importing it. (Well, there can be shares, but they'll end up invisible at anything other than SSH level.) File and folder names below share level are not subject to this limitation.
The EXPORT function is not covered in any Netgear documentation I've found. You can read about my experiments with it at Experiments-with-exporting-and-importing-a-volume-in-OS6-7-1. As best as I have been able to tell, there have been no changes made since then (since the warning error wasn't even corrected).
Now, all that said, a NAS is not really intended to be used that way and an external USB drive is a better solution. That's especially true now with the RedayNAS being EOL -- use a format on the USB drive that can be read by your computer in case the NAS dies.
StephenB
Aug 27, 2025Guru - Experienced User
Dewdman42 wrote:alright so I guess if I were to use an external USB with brtfs on it, I could get all the snapshot advantages
yes.
Dewdman42 wrote:it seems that Flex-raid to a certain extent and X-Raid definitely might take some automatic actions if I were to hot swap it into the bay, which would not be good.
Neither should do anything automatically, esp. if the jbod volume has a unique name. You'd need to click on format before it was added to the volume.
You would need to be careful to export the jbod volume before removal.
Dewdman42
Aug 27, 2025Virtuoso
You would need to be careful to export the jbod volume before removal.
I think that is a noteworthy failure point. If I hot-pulled the JBOD volume and did a factory reset without having exported it first...I guess that volume would be unusable and unable to import back into any readynas. Poof gone.
with USB as the solution, then basically I can unplug it, factory reset and plug it back in and no problem its all still there. It was never part of the flex raid configuration to begin with and the only thing is if its formatted as BTRFS, then basically I will only be able to read it from linux that is configured to use BTRFS USB drives, which readynas is...as long as I still have a working readynas, I would be able to plug it in and get to the backup data. If I have to plug it into some other computer there may be some work involved, but it won't be stuck in limbo of having been part of a flex raid array that was never exported. I think I have that right?
- StephenBAug 28, 2025Guru - Experienced User
Basically yes. The volume export is intended to migrate a volume to another NAS (as a one-of activity), not for repeated use as a backup.
- Dewdman42Aug 28, 2025Virtuoso
to be clear I wasn't meaning to repeatedly export it or remove it. I was meaning in the event that I need to factory reset the raid1 volume and restore it from the JBOD volume in drive bay4, I would need to remove the backup volume before the factory reset. But if I forget to export it first before removing it and do the factory reset...I won't be able to restore it..it will be lost in limbo stuck in the status for the system which is now factory reset.. its a point where simply forgetting to do something would render the data essentially gone and unable to restore from it. Yes as long as I never forget to do that on that fateful day...it could work...but...seems safer to just use USB...becuase can't make that mistake with USB backup drive.
- StephenBAug 28, 2025Guru - Experienced User
Dewdman42 wrote:
I would need to remove the backup volume before the factory reset. But if I forget to export it first before removing it and do the factory reset
You'd definitely need to very careful using an internal JBOD backup. If you did forget, you could likely still mount the drive using ssh, but you might also need to use SSH to restore it.
Operationally it is easier to use USB. I do recommend using the same drive as you'd use internally (in an enclosure). People buy USB drives largely on price, and I think the consequence there is that the drives aren't as reliable.
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