Hi,I’ve just bought a RN314 to replace my Readynas Ultra 2.Can I put my two 2tb x-raided drives from my ultra 2 straight into my new RN314 without loosing any data ?I’ve also bought 2 fresh 4tb drives to add to the additional 2 bays to make a total of 6tbs of raided space.Will this work ?CheersDan

No, you cannot simply transfer the drives. The RN314 uses a different filesystem which is incompatible with the one used by the Ultra 2, so you'll have to copy the data from the Ultra 2 to the RN314. The best way would be to backup the data somewhere else so you can put all four drives into the RN314 and create a new 2x2TB + 2x4TB array (it will have a usable capacity of 8TB, not 6TB), then copy the data from the backup to the RN314.If you don't already have enough backup storage to hold the contents of the Ultra 2's array, you could put one of your new 4TB drives in a USB enclosure and backup the Ultra 2 array to it, then create a new array in the RN314 with the two 2TB drives plus the remaining 4TB drive (for a usable capacity of 4TB). Copy the data from the 4TB USB drive to the RN314, then pull the 4TB drive out of its USB enclosure and add it to the RN314's array. You'll end up with the same 8TB usable capacity.

Hi,That's great! thanks for the advice.Do I need to format any of the drives or set-up partitions before I move them into the new RN314.I was planning on using the x-raid set-up for all the drives.My plan was as follows:-1) back-up data to spare 4tb drive.2) Move the two 2tb drives into the new RN314.3) set-up the drives in the RN314 with x-raid4) Add additional 4tb drive set to x-raid5) copy data over from external 4tb HDD6) put additional 4tb drive into RN314 (Should I format it first ?).CheersDan

Don't format, just delete the partitions off the disk. The NAS will detect an unformatted disk and partition it and format it.

You can combine steps 2-4 if you like (installing all three drives in the RN314, and then power it up).

Cool.One more quick question.If I put an external HDD (the 4tb one) into an external enclosure and connect it to the ReadyNas Ultra 2 via the USB will I need to format the HDD first and put a partion on it or will the ReadyNas Ultra do that ?CheersDan

Moving disks from Readynas Ultra 2 to RN314

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wolfie111
Guide
Jul 07, 2016
Thanks Stephen, 1st 4tb disk inserted hot, os6 gui shows 4tb disk synching (with 2tb I suppose) and display changed to raid1, ~4 hours estimate. Also, shows a portion of the health as degraded now, hoping that goes away after completion, old disk showed healthy before I began, new 4tb WD Red out of the box I'm assuming should be healthy too.

Sound normal?

Also, any comments in preparing my other 2tb (with all my original data) in the ultra with the radiator format prior to wiping with a format on the new machine?

Recall above, I plan to use that as a backup USB for the data I transferred to the RN516 by putting it in an external enclosure, and could format NTFS either by PC or the 516, though I'm leaning to ext4 based on a lot of reading. Thoughts?

Also had some bad experience formating USB drives (just bricked one) and I'm not too familiar with making/modifying/removing MBR and partitioning. Need layman approach, though I think it is important to be able to read that drive from either device, and know both can provide that option with appropriate software/drivers.

Any other advice getting the new system up and running, my data preserved on the original 2 TB drives and all new copies universally accessible on at least 2 storage devices from any platform?

Thanks again, your help is invaluable.
- StephenB
  Guru - Experienced User
  Jul 07, 2016
  wolfie111 wrote:
  Thanks Stephen, 1st 4tb disk inserted hot, os6 gui shows 4tb disk synching (with 2tb I suppose) and display changed to raid1, ~4 hours estimate. Also, shows a portion of the health as degraded now, hoping that goes away after completion, old disk showed healthy before I began, new 4tb WD Red out of the box I'm assuming should be healthy too.
  
  It sounds ok, the volume is degraded until the resync finishes. When this phase completes you should have a 2 TB volume size (shows up as 1.8 TiB on the NAS).
  
  With mixed disk sizes, I think of the RAID mode as a layer cake. You have one "bottom" RAID-1 layer now. With the third disk, that layer is expanded to 4 TB (and converted to use RAID-5) first. That is called horizontal expansion. After that phase, a new RAID-1 layer is added on top to use the remaining space on the 4 TB drives. That layer is joined into the existing volume (so you end up with a 6 TB volume (5.4 TiB). That second phase is called vertical expansion.
  
  The system needs to reboot to start the second phase - and it might want you to do it manually. So keep an eye out for that later on.
  
  wolfie111 wrote:
  Recall above, I plan to use that as a backup USB for the data I transferred to the RN516 by putting it in an external enclosure, and could format NTFS either by PC or the 516, though I'm leaning to ext4 based on a lot of reading. Thoughts?
  
  I tend to go with NTFS for backup, just because you can read it on any PC. So I'd put the drive in a USB 3 enclosure, connect it to a windows PC and reformat. You shouldn't need to worry about MBR or GPT. Either can be used with a 2 TB drive, and Windows should simply handle it. Open the windows disk manager, right-click on each partition (windows calls them volumes) and delete. Then create a new one for the entire drive (windows might then tell you to initialzie the drive - not sure about that). Finally do a quick format.
  
  With older firmware there was a significant performance hit if you used NTFS, but that problem went away with 6.5.0

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Moving disks from Readynas Ultra 2 to RN314

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