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Forum Discussion
t_m
Jun 27, 2020Aspirant
Upgrading 1st disk on RN214 (pure JBOD config) (English)
(Originally posted by mistake in Chinese forum, Sorry) Hi, I have a RN214 which I populated with whatever disks I had lying around in a fully JBOD config (1TB, 2TB, 4TB, 3TB respectively) when I bou...
Marc_V
Jun 28, 2020NETGEAR Employee Retired
Welcome to the Community!
If you are planning to make all drives to be one volume then going X-RAID would be the way to go. However, If I understand it correctly, you are planning to have two volumes on RAID1 so if this is the case, staying on Flex-RAID is needed.
If you are upgrading Disk 1 and plan to do RAID1 with Disk 2. It would be best to do full backup on both drives then replace Disk 1 and destroy Disk2 volume then recreate the volume on RAID1 selecting Disk 1 and 2.
You will be doing this procedure on Flex-RAID.
1. Do full backup on Disk 1 and Disk 2.
2. Replace Disk 1 with new 2TB
3. Destroy Disk 2 JBOD Volume
4. Create new volume RAID 1 using Disk 1 and Disk 2
5. Transfer Backups on new RAID 1 volume
New configuration would be RAID 1 (Disk 1 and Disk 2) JBOD (Disk 3) JBOD (Disk 4)
The same wil be done if you are planning to change Disk 3 and 4 in the future.
It is best to do full backup so as no data will be left out, you don't have to worry about logins as well, it stays with the system.
HTH
Regards
StephenB
Jun 28, 2020Guru - Experienced User
Marc_V wrote:
You will be doing this procedure on Flex-RAID.
1. Do full backup on Disk 1 and Disk 2.
2. Replace Disk 1 with new 2TB
3. Destroy Disk 2 JBOD Volume
4. Create new volume RAID 1 using Disk 1 and Disk 2
5. Transfer Backups on new RAID 1 volume
You do have to destroy Disk 1 volume, then create a new volume on the 2 TB disk.
There is another option though.
- Destroy Disk 2's volume
- Add Disk 2 to the Disk 1 volume for redundancy (making it RAID-1, but wasting 1 TB of space)
- Hotswap Disk 1 with the new 2 TB disk. The volume should expand to 2 TB at this point.
- Transfer Backup of original disk 2 volume on the new RAID-1
This avoids the need to restore the home folders and reinstall your apps.
- t_mJun 28, 2020Aspirant
Hi,
Thanks for the responses...
Re: the 2nd solution - please confirm if my understanding is correct? By default, the (FlexRAID) RAID1 would need to be recreated destructively on both disk1 and disk2 for the larger 2GB size OR actually, the RAID 1 expansion from 1G to 2G is actually a smooth no data loss operation?
Should I remove the other 2 HDDs before doing the above?
- StephenBJun 28, 2020Guru - Experienced User
t_m wrote:
Should I remove the other 2 HDDs before doing the above?
No.
t_m wrote:
the (FlexRAID) RAID1 would need to be recreated destructively on both disk1 and disk2 for the larger 2TB size OR actually, the RAID 1 expansion from 1T to 2T is actually a smooth no data loss operation?
You'd need to destroy the volume on disk 2, but not the volume on disk 1. So there should be no data loss on the disk 1 volume.
You convert to RAID-1 (2x1TB) with the 1 TB disk in place. Hotswapping the 1 TB disk will first resync the 2x1TB RAID group, and (per the manual) will automatically expand to 2x2TB RAID-1.
- SandsharkJun 29, 2020Sensei
There are yet other options, though there may be a bit more risk (which I will describe later).
The first step is always backup. By that, I mean on another device.
If you EXPORT drive 1, the home share location (but not the data in them) should migrate to drive 2. Unfortunately, as with their original creation, the actual shares won't be creted until the user again logs on. Once you've done that, you can replace drive 1 with a larger drive and add it as redundancy to Drive 2. Then, restore the content from Drive 1. The risk here is that I have seen a case where the home folder location wasn't properly migrated (though I was doing a lot of experiments, and something I did earlier may have triggered it) and that i do not know absolutely that the home folder location will not migrate to another drive (if that even matters to you). Note thast, if needed, the EXPORTed drive can be re-IMPORTed to the NAS (though you'd need to make room for it), but the data in the home folders on it will only be accessible via SSH.
You could also EXPORT drive 3 and/or 4, put the new drive there, and add redundancy to the volume on Drive 2 with Drive 1 still in place, then EXPORT drive 1 later. If done when no other volumes are present, the migration of the home folder location is more assured. Once all that was done, re-IMPORT drives 3 and 4. Note that an IMPORT is done simply by powering down the NAS, inserting the drive, and powering back up.
If you have apps you are using, then there is more to be considered, and StephenB 's recommendation is the better direction, though you could EXPORT the volume on Drive 2 instead of destroying it, and replce it with the new 2TB for adding redundancy to the Drive 1 volume. That also leaves you the option of re-importing it (after making room for it) if needed, until you use it to replace Drive 1 and expand the volume.
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