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How to not lose data. Backup drive listed as dead.
I have a ReadyNas pro 4, chassy only, it's stocked with 3 WD Red Nas drives of 3TB each and I only have about 400GBs left of free space. I just saw in the Admin suite (the webapp for the NAS) that w...
WD30EFAXInorite wrote:
but wanted to ask how to go about replacing the backup disk (disk 1) and not lose any data?
To clarify: There is no individual "backup disk" in your setup. You are running XRAID (in particular RAID-5) which has single redundancy. But there is no dedicated parity disk - instead the data and parity blocks are spread evenly across the disks.
Your data should be ok right now, but it is certainly at risk. I do recommend making a backup of the NAS before you go further, as a second disk issue will result in data loss. Multiple disk failures with RAID are more common than you might think - the disks usually are installed at the same time, are identical models, in the same environment, and running under the same workload.
Backup over the network to a USB drive in a PC is generally faster than using USB (your NAS only supports USB 2).
Recovery isn't a difficult - you can just hot-swap disk 1 with the new (blank) disk. It will resync, and eventually tell you it is finished (and the volume will be marked as fully redundant). After that, you can hot-insert disk 4. I recommend doing this with the NAS running, as the software then detects the removal and reinsertion, and doesn't have to figure out what changed while it was shut down.
Inorite wrote:
I have a ReadyNas pro 4, chassy only, it's stocked with 3 WD Red Nas drives of 3TB each
Don't get the WD30EFAX as it is SMR. Instead go with the WD30EFZX. SMR doesn't work very well in RAID (and is particularly problematic if you are using OS 6). Generally avoid the drives current branded as "WD Reds", and get the ones branded as "Red Plus". You can also go with a Seagate Ironwolf (they are all CMR).
BTW, if you are running 4.2.x firmware, it is possible to convert your NAS to run OS-6. But it does require a factory reset, so you do need a full backup.
Since you are still running RAIDiator4.2.x on your Pro4, then you will eventually run into expansion limits. Assuming you started with the 3x3TB drives. then the limit is that you cannot expand beyond 16TB. You can use the RAID calculator at https://rdconfigurator.netgear.com/raid/index.html to see what you will get from various drive combinations, but keep in mind that it does not account for expansion limitations since it is designed for OS6 systems.
You could just replace the bad 3TB with another of equal size, but that will limit the impact of adding a 4th drive. With 3x3TB, adding another drive 3TB or larger will only add 3TB. On the other hand, you could go with a larger replacement and an equally sized additional one and use all the space on them (up to 10TB so you don't exceed the expansion limit).
The other option is to update to OS6. It's not officially supported, but does work on your Pro4. The process is destructive to your data, but you really need to consider making a backup now (if you don't have one already), so this could be a good time to make the switch. If you want to go that way, we can provide more details on how to do it (it's not like a normal OS update).
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