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Forum Discussion
Is it possible to mount a BTRFS partition on an external disk on the ReadyNAS?
Hi all, I am trying to get data from an old disk previously used in my ReadyNAS - I have an offsite copy of the data but given the current circumstances I can't easily get to it. Is it possible ...
robmash wrote:
I am trying to get data from an old disk previously used in my ReadyNAS - I have an offsite copy of the data but given the current circumstances I can't easily get to it. Is it possible to mount the disk in a USB caddy and read the BTRFS filesystem as an external disk on the ReadyNAS? I have only ever prevsiously used NTFS disks as external drives on this unit.
What RAID mode were you using in the NAS?
How many disks were in the array?
BTRFS alone isn't enough, you need the MDADM driver as well, as ReadyNAS uses BTRFS on top of MDADM RAID bacause BTRFS RAID is not ready for prime time. This will only work if your drive was a single JBOD or one of a two-drive RAID1. Otherwise, you need more drives from the set.
This was a volume which was not part of a RAID group, configured as JBOD. So, based upon what you say it should work. However, when I plug the drive in I see nothing. Is there anything else I need to do?
robmash wrote:
This was a volume which was not part of a RAID group, configured as JBOD. So, based upon what you say it should work. However, when I plug the drive in I see nothing. Is there anything else I need to do?
Did you also install mdadm? It is needed, even with a jbod disk. I've never used the windows packages, so I don't know how the commands compare with linux. Another Windows option is to purchase ReclaiMe. That is expensive though.
How old is this volume? Note that the OS is on the disk(s), and the NAS does boot from the disks.
If it's fairly recent (6.5.2 firmware or later), then it would be safe to simply power down the NAS, remove the two disks in the RN102 (label by slot), and insert the old disk in slot 1. When the NAS is powered on, it will attempt to upgrade the OS partition if it is out of date. After that step, the volume should be accessible.
If the volume predates 6.5.2, then there is some risk that the firmware upgrade would fail.
Under the GUI wrapper, ReadyNAS "JBOD" is a one-drive MDADM RAID1. It's not really RAID since there is only one drive, but MDADM allows it and Netgear takes advantage of it. I suspect they use it because it makes migration to a real RAID so much easier. Now, whether the Windows MDADM RAID driver will recognize a "one drive RAID", I cannot say; but it would look similar to a single drive of a two-drive RAID1. I have plans to do some testing with those drivers, but haven't gotten to it yet. At least one forum user has reported success with them.
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