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Moving discs from a Duo v1 to an RN204
Hi everyone, I have a Duo V1 with a pair of 2TB discs. Sadly all is now full so I'm about to buy an RN204 plus an extra disc or two. This is where it gets fiddly though, becuase it seems that I can't...
You are on the right track. I just had to wipe my NV+ v2 (I have a Duo v1 also), it's a bit stressful wiping your main unit, but do the backup, check it carefully, then you are off. If you could host the 3TB soemwhere, then you could use that to backup your two 2TB (mirrored) drives. Then plug them in to a PC/Mac via USB to SATA adapter and delete the partitions. No need for low level format, deleting the partitions will effectively 'reset' the drives because all logical formatting will be gone. The new RN204 will simply format them (I've not done it as I mentioned, but I am pretty certain that will happen).
During my recent resetting of my NAS, I actually made two backups, as I reset my NV+ back to factory defaults clearing all data in the process. In fact, once you have backed up your old drives, inserting them in to the RN204 and performing a full factory reset should also blow away any current data and format (and avoiding the need to fiddle around deleting partitions). I am looking at getting a RN204 myself, but I don't have one yet.
I must emphasise, check your backups can be read in another machine, i.e. do the ful backup and check it can be ready on a PC/Mac independently. OK, I am paranoid about this, in my case backups all went fine with no issues at all.
Good luck. Come back with the results or if you run in to any issues. Folks here will be pleased to help out.
Hi Tony, well sort of. I'm buying one new 3TB disc (only 2TB will be usable initially) which I want to copy the data over to. Then I want to move the two current discs over.
I'm trying to make sense of the clear statement in the ReadyNAS documentation that says disc that already have data on will not work. From:
http://kb.netgear.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/22896?cid=wmt_netgear_organic
It says "If you try to use previously formatted disks in a system that already contains usable disks, the system does not reformat or use the previously formatted disks. Any data on the previously formatted disk remains intact."
So what you are saying should work is stated not to by Netgear unfortunately.
I did wonder if doing a factory reset on the duo will do what is needed to the discs before I move them but that isn't clear.
Thanks for your help here, I want to be sure things will work before I start, for obvious reasons. I have data backed up on a cloud service but bringing it all back if things go wrong will be very slow.
- Richard.
One potential problem, you have no way to limit the new 3TB drive to use only 2TB, then inserting the old 2TB drives will not work because they are not big enough. XRAID is great, but you must use drive equal to or larger than existing drives. If you install them all at the same time, then XRAID figures it out and will cap the volume to use 2TB of each drive.
Inserting a disk should automatically get picked up. To be fair, I have only actually personally done this with new unformatted drives. In the worst case scenario where the RN won't pick up the old drive, you can insert it in to any PC or USB holder and clear the format, the RN will then pick it up fine. These forums have had examples in the past so I do not see any issue with your plan to use the old disks.
Of course disaster can happen during the swapping of the disks, so make sure your backup is good.
Hi Tony, thanks for your message. You are quite right to warn about the first disc setting the baseline, instead I would need to move over and use a 2TB disc from the Duo first, copy the files, then move the second disc (after wiping) to gain protection and finally add the 3TB drive. Returning the drives to the manufacturing state seems to be possible with various utilities, eg SeaTools. That's probably what is usually described as a low level format? I can't find a specific article on the forum about this so if anyone has a link to one that would be great.
As you say, making sure the backups are solid before starting this is important, there is a long period where the data is not protected from a drive failure.
Thanks for your help, the advice from others is simply "buy three more discs, it will be easier" - sorry, not an option!
- Richard.
You are on the right track. I just had to wipe my NV+ v2 (I have a Duo v1 also), it's a bit stressful wiping your main unit, but do the backup, check it carefully, then you are off. If you could host the 3TB soemwhere, then you could use that to backup your two 2TB (mirrored) drives. Then plug them in to a PC/Mac via USB to SATA adapter and delete the partitions. No need for low level format, deleting the partitions will effectively 'reset' the drives because all logical formatting will be gone. The new RN204 will simply format them (I've not done it as I mentioned, but I am pretty certain that will happen).
During my recent resetting of my NAS, I actually made two backups, as I reset my NV+ back to factory defaults clearing all data in the process. In fact, once you have backed up your old drives, inserting them in to the RN204 and performing a full factory reset should also blow away any current data and format (and avoiding the need to fiddle around deleting partitions). I am looking at getting a RN204 myself, but I don't have one yet.
I must emphasise, check your backups can be read in another machine, i.e. do the ful backup and check it can be ready on a PC/Mac independently. OK, I am paranoid about this, in my case backups all went fine with no issues at all.
Good luck. Come back with the results or if you run in to any issues. Folks here will be pleased to help out.
To close this out, I found that I did need to delete the partitions from the reused discs from the Duo to get them to be used. If I put them into the RN204 without doing this the firmware refused to reformat them.
Putting the disc into a cradle on a PC and deleting the partitions with the Windows disc manager did the trick.
The New 2TB disc and the two recycled 2TB discs now all happily running inside the RN204.
Richard.
richard-york wrote:
Returning the drives to the manufacturing state seems to be possible with various utilities, eg SeaTools. That's probably what is usually described as a low level format? I can't find a specific article on the forum about this so if anyone has a link to one that would be great.
If you can connect the drive to the PC, then you can either unformat using the windows disk manager or you can zero the drive with seatools (which is one of the advanced destructive tests).
Windows disk manager is probably quicker - you launch it (for instance right-click on computer and select "manage"), and then right-click on every "volume" on the disk and delete it (the "volume" is actually a partition). When all are gone, the disk is unformatted.
richard-york wrote:
the advice from others is simply "buy three more discs, it will be easier" - sorry, not an option!
Actually my advice was to get one additional 3 TB drive (giving you 3 TB RAID-1 on the RN204), and continuing to use the duo - either as backup or additional 2 TB of primary storage. That would have been quicker/easier, though of course it would have cost about $100 US more than the path you are on.
Hi Stephen, thanks for the notes on deleting the partitions from the disc. You are quite right about your sugestion on getting more discs, you did suggest getting two in total, not three. An option of course and perhaps a not a high cost on its own but on top of the new NAS and one new disc already I'd like to avoid it.
Between yourself and Tony I have what I need and the new kit is ordered. I'll report back for the record if I have any hiccups or if all goes smoothly.
- Richard.
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