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Readynas 102 - How do I access the drives?
Let me begin by saying I am a COMPLETE NOVICE in these matters. I bought a Readynas 102 because it seemed to be "plug and play" - clearly not.
PLEASE ASSUME THAT I AM NON-TECHNICAL IN ANY RESPONSE!
I have connected a ReadyNAS 102 to my PC. I put a 1 terabyte drive in slot 1 and a 3 terabyte drive in slot 2, assuming that meant that I had 4 terabytes of storage.
I have set up a backup to the drive using a piece of software called SyncBackFree. I have used this for years. simply backing up a smaller drive to a larger one.
My backup runs perfectly, but I am close to exceeding 1Tb and filling the first drive. I can find no way to get at the 3Tb in the second slot.
Please help. I have wasted hours trying to make head or tail of the "advice" given in other threads, none of which seem to address my specific problem and all of which leave me standing in technical terms within the first sentence...
Lightmancer wrote:
Please help. I have wasted hours trying to make head or tail of the "advice" given in other threads, none of which seem to address my specific problem and all of which leave me standing in technical terms within the first sentence...
Not sure if this will help...
Your original setup (1 TB + 3 TB) will only give you 1 TB of storage, not 4 TB.
The NAS uses a disk mirroring technique called RAID-1, which keeps the two disks in sync. Everything written to disk 1 is also written to disk 2. Then if one disk fails, the data is still available on the other.
This redundancy comes at a price - the total space available is (in general) the sum of the disks minus the largest disk. In your case (only two disks) this becomes the smaller of the two drives installed. So 1 TB total, not 4 TB.
The easiest way for you to proceed is to purchase a new 3 TB drive and replace drive 1. The NAS will expand your space to 3 TB (still providing you protection from a single disk failure). If you go this route, I recommend either a WD30EFRX (western digital "Red") or an ST3000VN000 (seagate "Ironman"). Both drives are intended for NAS use. I use western digital myself.
The second option is to
(a) uninstall any apps
(b) switch to flexraid
(c) delete the data volume (losing the backups on it)
(d) create two new data volumes (one for each disk)
This will give you all 4 TB of space, but no redunduncy. You'd then create shares on both volumes, and set up the backup program on the PC to back up to the share you want.
The second option is more work for you, and can be more confusing to manage. So I'd recommend the first option.
5 Replies
Lightmancer wrote:
Please help. I have wasted hours trying to make head or tail of the "advice" given in other threads, none of which seem to address my specific problem and all of which leave me standing in technical terms within the first sentence...
Not sure if this will help...
Your original setup (1 TB + 3 TB) will only give you 1 TB of storage, not 4 TB.
The NAS uses a disk mirroring technique called RAID-1, which keeps the two disks in sync. Everything written to disk 1 is also written to disk 2. Then if one disk fails, the data is still available on the other.
This redundancy comes at a price - the total space available is (in general) the sum of the disks minus the largest disk. In your case (only two disks) this becomes the smaller of the two drives installed. So 1 TB total, not 4 TB.
The easiest way for you to proceed is to purchase a new 3 TB drive and replace drive 1. The NAS will expand your space to 3 TB (still providing you protection from a single disk failure). If you go this route, I recommend either a WD30EFRX (western digital "Red") or an ST3000VN000 (seagate "Ironman"). Both drives are intended for NAS use. I use western digital myself.
The second option is to
(a) uninstall any apps
(b) switch to flexraid
(c) delete the data volume (losing the backups on it)
(d) create two new data volumes (one for each disk)
This will give you all 4 TB of space, but no redunduncy. You'd then create shares on both volumes, and set up the backup program on the PC to back up to the share you want.
The second option is more work for you, and can be more confusing to manage. So I'd recommend the first option.
Sage, that's very helpful and I have learned something already. I bought the NAS as a bundle with the 1TB drive and thought I was being sensible in buying and adding the 3TB - clearly it doesn't work out of the box the way that I thought.
A couple of questions, if I may.
Is "RAID-1" the same as "X-RAID" which is what the thing seems to be set up as now? (I just took it ouf of the box and connected it up)
It sounds like the sensible option is to buy a second 3TB as you suggest. If I do that am I able to just swop out the 1TB with the 3TB?
I confess that I don't understand the second option you describe - as I said I am aggressively non-technical so things like "switch to flexraid" and "create shares on both volumes" may as well be written in Sanskrit to me!
Thank you again.
Dear Lightmancer:
"Is "RAID-1" the same as "X-RAID""
Basically yes, X-Raid is Netgears version of RAID 1. If you are interested in learning more about RAID and the different types, check out a good write-up at http://appletechtalk.com/what-is-raid/.
"If I do that am I able to just swop out the 1TB with the 3TB?"
The Netgear X-RAID system does a great job of managing swapping out drives. With the RN102 running, you can remove the 1TB drive and replace it with a 3TB drive. The ReadyNAS will automatically enlarge the volumn size and syncronize the data on the new drive. During this time, the Adnibistration page will report that the system is Degraded and it is Resyncing the data. This is all normal and you can just let the system take care of itself.
The RN 102 is very similar to the RN202. You can read a comprehensive review of the RN202 which will also explain the hot swapping of drives at http://appletechtalk.com/netgear-readynas-rn202-part-1/
Hope this helps and welcome to the ReadyNAS community.
Regards,
David
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