After living happily with our NV+ for several years, we are now ready to expand the storage. We currently have a 1TB config (4 by 250MB XRAID), and plan to replace the HDs to a total of 4TB (4 by 1TB).I know that we should be able to swap the drives one at a time, but it seems it would be a lot quicker to just backup the whole thing to a USB-attached drive, swap all the disks at one time, then restore from the USB.So. Backing up to the USB looks super simple. Plug in the USB, and push the button.I'm cool with swapping all the drives.Then.... What's the simplest, most reliable way to restore the whole thing on the new, larger space?I've looked all over the place, but have not been able to find anything about restoring a ReadNAS from a USB drive? :( Perhaps I'm not asking the question properly?TIA!GlueGuy

I agree that rebuilding from scratch has some advantages. In addition to likely being faster, you also can fall back to the 4x250MB drives if something goes wrong. (Do label them by slot number when you remove them).You can save the full NAS in one backup job, but restoring it isn't symmetric - not sure why. So you need to recover it in multiple steps.Do you use the private home share features?

Hadn't thought about saving the old 250 MB drives, but it's a good ideaYou can save the full NAS in one backup job, but restoring it isn't symmetric - not sure why. So you need to recover it in multiple steps.That was my question I guess. We backup via Acronis now, but what are the "multiple steps"?Do you use the private home share features?We just have the NAS attached as a network drive, and point Acronis to the appropriate folder. Acronis keeps a 2-month running backup, so we can go back to any point in time in the last 60 days.So we're using it purely as a backup device.

Got it.So you are running Acronis to a particular set of network share(s). To backup the NAS you need to (a) save the configuration file from Frontview(b) Note any add-ons that might be enabled (likely are none!)(c) Copy the network share(s) you are using to another device.The fastest way to copy the network shares is over a gigabit ethernet connection - that is quite a bit quicker than using the USB ports on the NAS. So maybe attach a USB drive to a PC, and copy over the network from the PC. I suggest using teracopy or robocopy to ensure that everything is transferred reliably.To rebuild the NAS(a) insert your new disks with the NAS powered down(b) Power up and do the new install(c) reinstall any add-ons(d) restore the configuration(e) restore the acronis shares (again over gigabit ethernet).The order matters on (c) and (d).I guess if you are in a rush, you could simply start with empty network folders, as you can reload all the old disks if you need to retrieve the current backup data. Just be careful to insert them when the NAS is powered down.

(a) save the configuration file from FrontviewWhat the heck is Frontview? All I've ever used is RAIDar. Guess I better look it up... I hardly ever use RAIDar BTW; only once every once in a while when I need to update the firmware.The fastest way to copy the network shares is over a gigabit ethernet connection - that is quite a bit quicker than using the USB ports on the NAS. So maybe attach a USB drive to a PC, and copy over the network from the PC. I suggest using teracopy or robocopy to ensure that everything is transferred reliably.I find it hard to believe that going over USB is slower than gigabit... I suppose it might be, but it takes all night (8+ hours) to do our full 100GB backup over gigabit with Acronis.I've never used the "Backup" button on our NV+. What exactly gets done? I've always assumed it just copied the file structure on the NV+ to the attached USB drive. Is it something else?

Raidar is just a readynas discovery utility and provides some key information, when you click on setup in raidar you are then linked to the readynas admin system which is called Frontview. This is what you would have used for your firmware update.Frontview has a backup facility to pull or push data from the readynas. You can program the backup button to run all or some of the backup jobs you have set up in Frontview.

NV+ backup/expand/restore | NETGEAR Communities

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vandermerwe
Master
Jan 29, 2014
I don't know that there is a proper way to interrupt expansion.
Expansion to that size volume should be complete within 24 hours.
You have a good backup so you could perhaps interrupt it at an earlier stage if you thinks it's hung.
You may find that after a reboot it starts expanding again.
GlueGuy
Aspirant
Jan 29, 2014
So this could take up to 24 hours?!?! Seems like a really long time considering that all the other steps only took a few hours.

So the suggestion is to let it go for a while longer? Up to 24 hours? And if it's still in the same state, then reboot it? Via the power button?

BTW - Is this web site always this flaky? It's been unavailable several times today (at least for me). Checking it from other places (like http://www.isup.me/readynas.com) says it's the readynas.com site is unavailable.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jan 29, 2014
If you last did a factory reset on RAIDiator 3.x (sounds likely from what you've posted) it is probably doing an offline expansion. Expansion can take a long time. Is it still stuck at the same percentage?

GlueGuy

Aspirant

Jan 29, 2014

mdgm wrote:
If you last did a factory reset on RAIDiator 3.x (sounds likely from what you've posted) it is probably doing an offline expansion. Expansion can take a long time. Is it still stuck at the same percentage?

mdgm wrote:
If you last did a factory reset on RAIDiator 3.x (sounds likely from what you've posted) it is probably doing an offline expansion. Expansion can take a long time. Is it still stuck at the same percentage?

Our RAIDar is 3.01c1-p1. I'm not sure we've ever updated it.

It stayed stuck at 1.3% from ~~ 8:30 AM until almost 5PM, then suddenly jumped to 17.2% (I was not there when it moved).

Then around 6PM there was another jump to 61.7%. It's now about 6:20PM, and it's still stuck at 61.7%.

Kind of stunning that it's been almost 10 hours with virtually no signs of life (other than the repetitive blinking lights on the front panel).

mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jan 29, 2014
RAIDar is the client app you run on your PC.

RAIDiator is the NAS firmware

When you open Frontview when the NAS is working does the interface show Infrant or has it been rebranded as NetGear?
GlueGuy
Aspirant
Jan 29, 2014
We got it from Netgear, and it says Netgear everywhere.

Frontview says RAIDiator 4.1.13 [1.00a043]

Power supply fragged a year or so ago, and we got a whole new chassis from Netgear at that time. Just swapped the HDs from the old box to the new box.

BTW - Expansion completed. Now says we have 2738 GB. That seems kind of low for 4x1TB disks?

Each disk is 927 GB *4 that should come up somewhere in the 3.7 TB range shouldn't it?
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Jan 29, 2014
It's xraid (e.g., raid-5) so its about 927 x 3 GB - quite close to what you have. The remaining 927 gb is for redundancy.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jan 29, 2014
Considering you are running a several year old version of RAIDar I was hoping you weren't also running an ancient version of RAIDiator. Good to see that you are running the latest version of RAIDiator for your NAS.

I think X-RAID on Sparc uses RAID-4 but your volume capacity is what is expected like StephenB says.
GlueGuy
Aspirant
Jan 29, 2014
StephenB wrote:
It's xraid (e.g., raid-5) so its about 927 x 3 GB - quite close to what you have. The remaining 927 gb is for redundancy.

I love logical explanations.

Thanks again!

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NV+ backup/expand/restore

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