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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, 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.
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