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Messed up trying to upgrade drives, help!
Hi, I could use some help upgrading the drives in my ReadyNAS RN212. I had 2 Seagate 6TB drives in RAID1, and wanted to upgrade to 2 12TB drives. I don't think I followed the correct procedure in doi...
Your procedure was the correct one.
I'd start by testing the two new drives in a Windows PC using Seatools. I always start with the non-destructive full test, and follow up with the full write-zeros test. That will take awhile (perhaps one day per drive) - but it will give some assurance that both disks are ok. I have purchased some drives that passed one of these tests out of the box, but failed the other. You can connect the drives with directly with SATA (assuming a desktop PC) or get a USB-SATA dock.
Assuming the drives pass, then boot up the NAS with only the 6 TB drive installed in slot 2. Then hot-insert one of the (now blank) 12 TB drives in slot 1. That should resync.
Once you are sure the resync has completed, you can then try hot-swapping drive 2 again.
However, when powered back up, and accessed the web dashboard, I saw that the drives were now re-syncing, which I did not want since 12TB #2 had already synced.
Likely disk 1 was being resynced to disk 2. Probably not an error, and interrupting that sync explains why disk 1 is now red.
One thing you should do for extra data safety is to connect the 6 TB drive from slot 1 to a PC and format it there. Then copy your data to that drive over the network. You have no redundancy at the moment, so any problems with drive 2 will result in data loss.
Your procedure was the correct one.
I'd start by testing the two new drives in a Windows PC using Seatools. I always start with the non-destructive full test, and follow up with the full write-zeros test. That will take awhile (perhaps one day per drive) - but it will give some assurance that both disks are ok. I have purchased some drives that passed one of these tests out of the box, but failed the other. You can connect the drives with directly with SATA (assuming a desktop PC) or get a USB-SATA dock.
Assuming the drives pass, then boot up the NAS with only the 6 TB drive installed in slot 2. Then hot-insert one of the (now blank) 12 TB drives in slot 1. That should resync.
Once you are sure the resync has completed, you can then try hot-swapping drive 2 again.
However, when powered back up, and accessed the web dashboard, I saw that the drives were now re-syncing, which I did not want since 12TB #2 had already synced.
Likely disk 1 was being resynced to disk 2. Probably not an error, and interrupting that sync explains why disk 1 is now red.
One thing you should do for extra data safety is to connect the 6 TB drive from slot 1 to a PC and format it there. Then copy your data to that drive over the network. You have no redundancy at the moment, so any problems with drive 2 will result in data loss.
Hi Stephen,
Thank you so much for your quick reply! I am following your suggestion of fully testing the 12TB drives, and will also backup the working 6TB drive.
Had a few followup questions if you can spare the time:
Is there a concept of Primary and Secondary with the drive bays, or any functional difference between them? You mentioned booting the NAS with 6TB drive in slot 2, blank drive in slot 1. Does the placement of drives when swapping & syncing matter?
And related: how does the NAS know which direction to sync? For example, as you explained that the unexpected re-sync I observed was likely disk 1 syncing to disk 2, when I had expected the opposite? Is there any way to control this behavior?
Lastly a general RAID question: once a drive has been setup in RAID1, is it possible to remove that drive and mount it elsewhere, ie to copy the data off? Or does this require disabling/removing the RAID array first in ReadyNAS before removing the drive?
Again, thanks again for all your help, I have seen your posts elsewhere in the forum and am very grateful for all your contributions!
Scott
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