New ReadyNas system, existing drives with data

The ReadyNAS, as will other brands, format and establish it's own volume. If you want to use those two drives, the data must be backed up to either a PC internal drive or an external drive.

Another option is to establish the ReadyNAS with new drives and transfer the data over the network.

It sounds as if you have data on drive 1 and then using rsync synchronize drive 2 to drive 1. If this is correct, then drive 2 could be placed in the ReadyNAS and a non-redundant volume established, the data copied over and then the drive 1 placed in the ReadyNAS for redundancy. Keep in mind the drive make and model must be on the Hardware Compatibility List (HCL) or they may not work properly. Check the list to see if your current drives are on it. Also be aware that while one drive is in your current box and the second drive is in the ReadyNAS, until all the steps are completed, you will be without an effective redundancy.

Also note that with all of your data in one device, be it the Linux box, the ReadyNAS or whatever, that is not a backup plan, for redundancy is to make replacing a single drive without data loss easy, it is NOT a backup plan.

Hello,

Please allow some very slight threat hijacking here, as my issue is practically the same but not being native English speaker, I'd gratefully get some more details on the above procedure.


My data is in a Taurus Gigalan; the disks are currently healthy, but I am not happy with the machine, then that's OT.
On my desktop I have been moving RAID1 arrays all the time, be it from machine to machine or from one Linux distro to another, but it seems not so simple with NAS?

If I understand well, you recommend this procedure:

0. Data is safely in your hardware, identical on 2 drives that we'll call sda1 and sda2.
1. Remove one of your 2 disks in your current hardware, call it sda2,
2. Set sda2 up in the new NAS, as a single unit, not redundant machine.
3. Start copy procedures between sda1 on former hardware and new NAS where sda2 sits; go do something else.
4 move the remaining sda1 disk from former hardware to NAS, set it up as mirror/new member of raid array, and go do something else again while the NAS syncs from sda2

Would that work?
can I just use rsync like in 'rsync -rluv root@OLDNAS:/my/folderrs/* root@NEWNAS:/my/folders' with the Duo?
Can I build the the RAID array after doing the copy with only one disk in the NAS?
Would the NAS accept sda1 as a "new" disk to include in a RAID1 array?

Cheers
Jean-Philippe

Below, my current partition table in my cheap thingy:
NASPAS> fdisk -l

Disk /dev/hda: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hda1 1 66 530144+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda2 67 121569 975972847+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hda3 121570 121601 257040 82 Linux swap

Disk /dev/hdb: 1000.2 GB, 1000204886016 bytes
255 heads, 63 sectors/track, 121601 cylinders
Units = cylinders of 16065 * 512 = 8225280 bytes

Device Boot Start End Blocks Id System
/dev/hdb1 1 66 530144+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdb2 67 121569 975972847+ fd Linux raid autodetect
/dev/hdb3 121570 121601 257040 82 Linux swap
It's all still ext2 AFAIK.

tropicalicecube wrote:

... 0. Data is safely in your hardware, identical on 2 drives that we'll call sda1 and sda2. 1. Remove one of your 2 disks in your current hardware, call it sda2, 2. Set sda2 up in the new NAS, as a single unit, not redundant machine. 3. Start copy procedures between sda1 on former hardware and new NAS where sda2 sits; go do something else. 4 move the remaining sda1 disk from former hardware to NAS, set it up as mirror/new member of raid array, and go do something else again while the NAS syncs from sda2 Would that work?

Yes, though in step (2) all you need to do is add sqa2 as a first disk (using the default setup). When you add the second disk to the duo it will automatically mirror. Note when you are re-using disks you sometimes need to delete the old partitions before installing them (if you see a "corrupt root" or similar message when you install the disk, that would be a clue that you need to do this).

Are your drives on Netgear's official HCL? Using drives that aren't on it will limit Netgear support.

tropicalicecube wrote:
...can I just use rsync like in 'rsync -rluv root@OLDNAS:/my/folderrs/* root@NEWNAS:/my/folders' with the Duo?

Not sure about this particular command syntax (not a linux guy).

Do you have a Duo V1 or the V2? I don't think the V2 supports rsync or NFS (at least not yet). The V1 supports both. You can also use the backup features in Frontview, instead of using command line stuff.

tropicalicecube wrote:
...Can I build the the RAID array after doing the copy with only one disk in the NAS? Would the NAS accept sda1 as a "new" disk to include in a RAID1 array?

Yes that should work. The Duo should re-sync when it sees the new drive, and you shouldn't lose any data.

Though this procedure should migrate your data, I would strongly recommend that you create a backup first. Rebuilding the raid array stresses the drives, so your data is more vulnerable than normal.

If you don't have a good backup plan, perhaps you should keep your old NAS running, and get new drives for the DUO. Then you can backup the DUO to the old one.

Thanks a lot for these in-depth details, StephenB, in particular the question about v1 and v2 - will have to check the shop on that, wasn't aware of what could be a showstopper here. Will check HCL of course, but these are already NAS drives from a Debian-based unit, seems much alike to me.

I obviously wanted to keep the price down, re-using the drives was part of the plan, but of course you are right, just copy to new is safer. they sell it with 1x1TB drive for 300CHF here, maybe I just copy it all, then get in the Duo one of the drives from the old one.
Cheers! Thanks again!
jean-Philippe.

The quick way to tell a v1 from a v2 is to look at the model number. The Duo starts with RND2 and three digits describing the included disks (000 being diskless) followed by a hyphen and then a 100 for v1 and 200 for v2. The last part is the region. (NAS for North America, EUS for Europe). Thus a diskless model in Switzerland would be RND2000-100EUS for a v1 and RND2000-200EUS for v2. (I am assuming that the standard EUS model is sold throughout the EU.

While the v2 model uses an ARM processor (Marvell) and is much faster than the v1 (Sparc processor) and has the new Frontview interface, it does lack at this point some of the file services that the v1 has supported. This may change with future upgrades, but at the current time I do not believe it supports NFS or rsysnc. Rsync is very slow for the initial backup which is why most recommend NFS for the initial backup job in Frontview and then switch to rsync and run it again. This verifies the backup and should take just a few minutes. Many times, if I have copied up some critical/important data such as photos from my camera, I will go into Frontview and manually run the backup job for that share. After it completes in a few minutes, and I have the data on both my NAS units, I will then and only then erase it from the camera SD card. Here in the US, the v2 is about 10% more expensive than the v1.

You may also want to consider the Ultra 2 which is Intel x-86 based (as is the vast majority of the ReadyNAS family). It uses the Atom D410 processor, is faster than the v1 Duo (about equal to the v2 I believe), has 1GB of memory and runs all the addons of the x-86 family (Ultra, Ultra Plus and Pro as well as the older NVX and Pro v1 models). In the US the Ultra 2 is about 50% more expensive than the Duo v2.

The procedure to move your data would be the same regardless of which NAS (even the competitors) you decide on. All NAS units will format and partition a new drive for their system.