ReadyNAS 104

Welcome to the Community!

What brand and model was your old NAS? Is the old NAS still working?

We use a different OS and filesystem on our OS6 models to what we used for older ReadyNAS so it's not as simple as moving the drives across. However if you have somewhere to backup your data to, if your old NAS was a ReadyNAS you could contact support and enquire about the cost of getting their remote assistance to attempt to backup your data.

All ReadyNAS units use Linux software RAID and assuming the disks, array and volume are fine the data can be recovered using an ordinary x86 Linux PC.

 

You would need to setup a new array (which would destroy all the data on the disks, which is why you must backup that first), but once you've done that you could add additional disks over time. Using the default X-RAID you could replace the disks with higher capacity disks over time to get volume expansion. Note that for vertical expansion if you have 4x2TB disks you would need to replace at least two of them with 4TB disks (one at a time of course, wait for resync to complete before replacing next disk). We only expand volumes when redundant space can be added.

  

If the NAS is being used for primary storage we would recommend regular backups. It would be advisable to update your backup before adding/replacing disks to expand your volume as the resulting resyncs will put heavy stress on your disks at a time when the volume is unprotected.

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bionic_ranga wrote:

 

 

 

Otherwise, I can see my having to manually and slowly, move data from drive to drive as I slowly add the drives. It will be a long, hard road . . .

 

 

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As mdgm explained, you can't directly migrate your disks if you have an older NAS.

 

Its best to get new drives for the new NAS anyway.  Moving data from the old NAS to the new can be automated with the built-in backup.  It might take 1-2 days to move everything after you get the initial volume built on the new NAS, but it doesn't need to be a manual process, and it isn't hard to set up.