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Use external SATA cloning dock to expand NAS
My RN528 came with 8x4TB Toshiba HDD’s. Using X-RAID I have about 21TB of usable space (if memory serves, might be a little higher). Presently about 10TB is populated. Considering swapping in 4 1...
StephenB wrote:You would have to keep the NAS powered down during the entire cloning process
The risk is that the NAS might not expand the volume when you boot it up after cloning.
The biggest issue with your proposed "solution" is that the NAS has to stay off during the process. If it's on and one of the drives is not present, then that removed drive becomes out of sync with the volume and would still need to go through a full re-sync when placed in the NAS, defeating the whole purpose. While normal expansion does take time, you have access to your data as it occurs. Here, you don't.
If you did do that, I think the NAS would do the expansion or could be forced to via an SSH command. If you do a normal one drive at a time expansion, the NAS does not create a partition in the expanded space until it's able to do an expansion, so it's at the same point as your cloned unit would be before it starts the expansion.
Sandshark wrote:If you did do that, I think the NAS would do the expansion or could be forced to via an SSH command.
I agree it should.
I recall one poster saying it didn't in his case, so thought the risk was worth pointing out.
Thanks StephenB and Sandshark , as usual you guys are a national treasure when it comes to these things.
Few explanations for this whacky idea, to address your replies:
1) Not in any hurry to rebuild, at all. Swapping in one disk at a time, with low risk, would work just fine. Reason for inquiring about this was because (a) I hadn't found any posts discussing this cloning approach, which surprised me, and (b) although I'm in no hurry, and I don't care if the NAS is shut down for a bit, it seemed like simply cloning drives was a much faster process, with greatly reduced HDD I/O, and I was curious why it isn't done more often. After reading your replies, maybe it isn't any simpler in the end, and appears to have a volume expansion risk that could create more work (SSH commands - always a joy to re-learn for us non-power users).
2) I also have multiple NAS units (RN528, RN424, RN212, also an RN314 that's not in use at the moment). My "main" NAS is the 528, due to its 10GbE interface (my home network is all 10GbE and WiFi 6E). The other NAS's are only 1GbE, with clunky CPU's, and are painfully slow to do just about anything (opinion). I have backed up the main NAS onto these older NAS units, but not "bit for bit"... rather I've backed up folders over time, and so the other 2 NAS units don't have a "perfect" clone of the 528. (I have found RSYNC to be (a) very finicky to set up, in particular choosing folders/shares/whatever, and (b) backups sometimes fail inexplicably.) I could remedy that of course, with some effort, and need to do so eventually. Also still need an offsite solution, I've been investigating cloud options, liking Backblaze and maybe Synology after first look. More research to do.
3) Am not thinking of these docking stations as backup units, not in the least. As noted, my initial interest was really just to run Seatools on new drives per your suggestion, without having to dig into my tower and futz with SATA cables/mounting/etc. Glad to read you are using one of these with success for things like that. It was the easy one-button cloning option on these docking stations that got me thinking about the subject of this thread.
4) Your suggestion to buy a single 16TB HDD and copy everything to that is a great idea, may just do that, in addition to making sure the other NAS units have true back-ups.
Is there a user friendly 3rd party software tool that can be used to backup one NAS to another, instead of using the clunky ReadyNAS OS?
FWIW, my main NAS is an RN526, the backups are an RN524, an RN202 (using jbod), and a Pro-6 with upgraded RAM (and running OS-6). One backs up on Monday, Wednesday, Friday; the second backs up on Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday; the third back ups on Sunday. All are UPS protected (as are my switches). The backups are on a power schedule, so normally only on during backup (or during scheduled maintenance jobs). So at least one backup NAS is always off (and most of the time, all three are off). The backup NAS also have all file sharing protocols disabled (only set up for rsync).
This is overkill, but I happen to have those NAS, so I figure I might as well use them. If/when one of the back up NAS fails, I'd switch to having one back up daily (Monday - Saturday) and the second back up weekly (Sunday).
jimk1963 wrote:
Is there a user friendly 3rd party software tool that can be used to backup one NAS to another, instead of using the clunky ReadyNAS OS?
As I mentioned in the hacking thread (that you are also posting on), I personally don't run apps on the NAS itself. So I'd limit myself to software that runs on a separate PC. That wouldn't be very efficient, as all the transfers (and analysis of what needs to be backed up) would need to go through the PC.
I have set up share-by-share backup jobs on the backup NAS, and those use rsync. I haven't seen seen rsync miss files, or back up jobs get aborted. That might be because the backup NAS are running the backup jobs.
jimk1963 wrote:
I've been investigating cloud options, liking Backblaze and maybe Synology after first look. More research to do.
Personally I use CrashPlan running on a PC that has the data volume mapped to a drive letter. Backup speeds are slow (and likely full recovery would be too). But I like the price, and the purpose is only disaster recovery. One drawback is that CrashPlan doesn't back up tib/tibx or vhd/vhdx files.
Though I could shift that to putting one of the backup NAS in a nearby family member's home.
Thanks StephenB ,
I wasn't very clear re: RSYNC - what I meant to ask was, is there an external PC-based program to run backups.But yeah, I get that efficiency would suffer, not to mention more complication I guess.
My RSYNC backup scripts all run from the main NAS (RN528) rather than from the backups, like you're doing. I will give that a try, maybe that's why I'm having intermittent success with it. Great tip.
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