ReadyNAS Duo Upgrade to 2TB Hard Drives

mdgm wrote:

Here;s what you should do 1. You should ensure you have a good backup of important data primarily stored on the ReadyNAS. RAID is not a backup and you will be breaking that RAID when you replace a disk. So during the time the replacement disk is syncing you are vulnerable to your other old disk failing. 2. You should upgrade to the latest RAIDiator (currently 4.1.7: http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_4_1_7_Notes). Note that the update requires a reboot. 3. If one of your disks is failing/bad obviously it should be replaced first. You can check the health of the disks under Status > Health > SMART+ in Frontview. If neither disk looks to be failing/bad then you can choose whichever disk you want to replace first. 4. Let's assume you replace disk 2 first. You would e.g. take disk 2 out and put the new SeaGate in slot 2. You would then wait for the resync to complete. 5. Then you would remove disk 1 and put the Hitachi in slot one. Don't reorder the order of the disks. Simply replace the existing disks with new disks one by one waiting for the resync to complete before replacing the next disk. Once the resync has completed on the final disk replacement you should be prompted to reboot for expansion to take place. Note that whilst the disks you have chosen may not be 4k sector disks, going forward all new 2TB disks released will be. So if you can it would be better to do the following: 1. Backup all data 2. Verify backup is good 3. Upgrade to the latest RAIDiator (currently 4.1.7: http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_4_1_7_Notes) if you haven't already 4. Do a System > Config Backup 5. Factory default: http://www.readynas.com/forum/faq.php#How_do_I_reset_the_ReadyNAS_to_factory_default%3F 6. Restore Config Backup 7. Restore data from backup

I am about to upgrade to two WD WD20EARX 2TB disks. I have some questions:
1) 'Note that whilst the disks you have chosen may not be 4k sector disks, going forward all new 2TB disks released will be.'. What is the implication if they aren't 4k sector disks? How do i find out if the disks I am getting are 4k?
2) I currently have 2 1TB drives in redundant RAID config. They are partitioned into two 500GB volumes. When I upgrade to the 2TB disks how will the volumes expand? I want to keep one volume 500GB and have the other one 1.5TB.
3) If I need to do a backup (is there an advantage to this technique?) rather than just put the new disks in one by one and syncing them, how is this done?

Thanks!