NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
RN316 Upgrading Hard Drives
Hi all, I have an RN316 with 6x 3TB Drives.
Running out of Space at the moment. So I want to start replacing the 3TB drives.
Now I know I will have to do one at a time, But is it as simple as just pulling out one drive 3TB drive and putting the new 6/8/10TB in and let it rebuild before putting the next in. Or do I need to do something special first?
Secondly which drive is best? The top one (ie the first one I put in when I first got it) or the bottom one?
Thirdly if I get a second NAS just a RN422 say to use as a seperate Time Machine Drive, will I need to reformat the 3TB drive/s before I put them in?
8 Replies
Sorry I should state, I am currently set up as X-Raid
AKLGUY wrote:
But is it as simple as just pulling out one drive 3TB drive and putting the new 6/8/10TB in and let it rebuild before putting the next in.
Yes. The first upgrade won't change the available space, but the second one will. You likely will need to reboot after the second one. That should trigger the expansion. Let that finish before you add the third.
However, if you are upgrading a lot of drives it would be faster to do a factory reset with all drives in place, and then restore the data from a backup. That builds the array once, instead of rebuilding it for every drive upgrade.
Note we do recommend having a backup of your data (always), but particularly when you are manipulating drives.
AKLGUY wrote:Secondly which drive is best? The top one (ie the first one I put in when I first got it) or the bottom one?
It doesn't much matter. Though if all drives are healthy, you might want to upgrade the oldest one first, under the theory that it might fail before the others.
If a drive isn't 100% healthy, then replace that one first. You can look at the SMART stats by downloading the log zip file from the web ui, and look in disk_info.log
AKLGUY wrote:
Thirdly if I get a second NAS just a RN422 say to use as a seperate Time Machine Drive, will I need to reformat the 3TB drive/s before I put them in?
Just do a factory install from the boot menu. Later on if you replace one with an old RN316 drive you will need to reformat the drive from the volume tab. Alternatively you can zero the drives using vendor tools (WD's lifeguard or Seagate's Seatools).
- Thanks however I don’t have a backup so don’t want the factory format option.
I will be going to 2 NASs to move my time machine backups off my main NAS. Eventually I will replace my RN316 with the equivalent 6/8 bay model at the time. Then move all the data to the new model keep the 316 for the backups.
Can I ESATA directly between the 2 NASs as it will be faster if Mount one NAS directly into the seconds one and copy the data that way rather than go via a computer right?
AKLGUY wrote:
Can I ESATA directly between the 2 NASsNo, that won't work.
NAS backup jobs will transfer data directly between the two NAS over your network. If you are skilled with linux you can also do this manually using ssh. But the NAS are not designed to act as eSATA (or USB) clients. They can access external disks using eSATA/USB but they cannot be accessed that way.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
