Newb install/expand on a RN102

Greetings ReadyNASers,

I got sick of the dreadful performance of my too-cheap-to-believe no-brand NAS, so got a RN102 to fit the same pair of 2TB Seagate Barracuda discs in.

Being paranoid about losing data, I backed up to an external drive, but was also reluctant to wipe both discs clean for a fresh install. Figuring that, worst case, I could rebuild my old RAID1 array from a single surviving disc if everything went pear shaped, I installed a single disc in my RN102 and followed the usual process to factory reset and start clean.

All went well, and I filled the single disc up off my external backup drive overnight. Confirmed that it was all present and intact this morning. Good.

This morning, I followed the general spirit of a recipe I found somewhere on this forum for installing a second disc. I pulled disc 1, installed disc 2, and did a factory reset to format it. Then I pulled disc 2 and installed disc 1, booted (to having a functioning single-disc NAS with all my data), then hot-installed disc 2.

Supposedly, the system should recognise that I'm adding a disc to a single disc X-RAID array, and automatically incorporate it in to the array so I have a proper redundant 2-disc X-RAID array.

Here's what my volumes page looks like now:

(I'm not allowed to make that pic a link to the full-res screenshot - probably due to my n00b status - but it's at http://www.timpaton.net/gallery/d/2968-1/Screenshot+from+2013-07-27+17_06_27.png - if that works)

If I'm not mistaken, the "Data" volume is unchanged since I put the second disc in. Green dot next to the pie chart (and on the picture of the discs), and a chunk of data on it.
The other volumes weren't there before - but they're all empty, and they all have a red dot. Most tellingly, the second disc in the picture of the discs (ie the front of the NAS unit) doesn't have a green light on it. So, by my reckoning, it's not really doing anything.

X-RAID is definitely turned on, so I would expect it should have automagically migrated across to a single "data" volume RAIDed across the two drives.

Both physical disc LEDs on the RN102 unit are lit.

I used the default set of shares (Documents, Pictures, Videos etc.), and they're all still there on the "data" volume. The other volumes have no shares on them.

It's been like this for about 10 hours now, which is longer than it took to copy that ~300GB of data there over USB2... so I'm pretty sure it should have been able to mirror the data to the second drive and incorporate it into the RAID array by now if it was ever going to. I've rebooted the RN102 a few times (with both discs in there) - soon-ish after installing the second drive (when nothing seemed to be happening), and again this evening after ample time for it to do it's thing... if it was going to do a thing.

I've probably made an obvious n00b mistake. Can somebody please point me in the right direction?
The unit is a big improvement over that other piece of junk I had been using... but it will be even better when I can get some redundancy happening.

Thanks,

Tim

Adding Disks

13 Replies

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mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jul 27, 2013
Hook up the second drive to a PC and delete the partitions off it (do not format it) and put the disk back in the NAS.
barefoot1
Aspirant
Jul 27, 2013
Thanks mdgm,

Is it possible to delete partitions with the disc in the NAS, using command line (ie fdisk)?

Otherwise... I'm a bit short on 3.5" SATA-compatible PC cases :oops: . I've really only had laptops since IDE days (I could probably dust off an old P3 that still boots something... but it won't talk to this disc! :lol: )

Or I might have to swap it in to an external HD case and do the job over USB.

Cheers,
tim
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jul 27, 2013
Try sgdisk -Z

Also dd over the start of the disk.

Use hdparm -I to make sure you are wiping the right disk.
barefoot1
Aspirant
Jul 27, 2013
mdgm wrote:
Use hdparm -I to make sure you are wiping the right disk.

You are very wise ;-)

Thanks for the help,

tim
barefoot1
Aspirant
Jul 27, 2013
For sake of closure on this - I put the disk in an external drive enclosure, connected it to my laptop and deleted all the partitions.

Then I put it back in the ReadyNAS box, and it automatically incorporated it in the RAID array. Just like it's supposed to.

I left it running overnight - the log file suggests it took about 6 hours. But the "Volumes" page and logs on the web interface kept me informed all along; my array went from "Unprotected" to "Degraded" (ie there is some data redundancy, but not complete) while data was copied across, then to "Redundant" when it completed.

Now I have only the one "data" volume, and the picture of the discs shows a green light on both of them.

I'll call that a successful outcome :-)

tim
mnordin
Aspirant
Aug 04, 2013
I had a similar experience. I have been using a Duo for several years. Initially with 2x500GB and then vertical expansion into 1TB and finally 2TB which is how I operate today. Access from primary Mac but as well PC in our home network.

Bought a RN104 (upgraded to 6.0.8 ) a few days to be able to expand beyond the limits of my old Duo.
I could do factory setup with one of my left-over 1TB discs (Seagate Barracuda LP and 7200.12 - no longer on the HCL for RN104) without problem, but adding a second disc for protection did not work.

After a number of tries what worked was the following:
1. Factory setup with first disk (any of the two worked)
2. Second disk I used Disk management from a Windows 7 PC created one partition and formatted as extFAT.
3. Inserted the disc, shows as green but separate volume - did not automatically add it as protection.
4. Changed to Flex-RAID.
5. Removed the volume (from Windows)
6. Created a new test volume
7. Removed the test volume
8. Changed back to X-RAID2. This my second drive was as valid for protection and the Rebuild of 'data' started. Also logged (as well via e-mail) status change from UNPROTECTED to DEGRADED.
9. Once complete (it's still in progress as I write this) I am confident I'm operational for the first phase of my migration.

/Magnus
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 04, 2013
mnordin when adding disks to your array you should add disks with no partitions on them. When you connected the disk to your PC you should have simply deleted the partitions off the disk.
mnordin
Aspirant
Aug 06, 2013
Ok, mdgm.

For my next step, in the migration I added a new 4TB disk in slot #3. I was automatically identified and volume sync started.
The RN104 now has 1TB+1TB+4TB and one free slot.
After a number of hours the sync was done and I had 3 running discs now with capacity increased from about 900GB to 1.8TB.

This is what I needed to copy my old data from the ReadyNas DUO, which I started to do.

Next I wanted to replace the first 1TB disc with a 2TB from my old Duo in order to do vertical expansion.
This time I removed the partition (using disk management on a W7 box).

I removed the 1TB disk from slot #1 and slided in the 2TB. It was recognised as New disk but is now shown black and no resync starts. I restared the unit but no change.

What did I do wrong?
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 06, 2013
Have you tried another reboot?

If you download the logs does it show any partitions on the disk?
mnordin
Aspirant
Aug 06, 2013
yes, tried several reboots.

Download logs, aha now I actually notice the download button in the Logs view - I hadn't seen it before. Here are all the detail logs!
And in the partitiions.log:

major minor #blocks name

31 0 1536 mtdblock0
31 1 128 mtdblock1
31 2 6144 mtdblock2
31 3 4096 mtdblock3
31 4 118784 mtdblock4
8 0 3907018584 sda
8 1 4194304 sda1
8 2 524288 sda2
8 3 972041912 sda3
8 16 976762584 sdb
8 17 4194304 sdb1
8 18 524288 sdb2
8 19 972041912 sdb3
8 32 1953514584 sdc
9 0 4192192 md0
9 1 523968 md1
9 127 1943821312 md127