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Forum Discussion
Turning 2disc JBOD volume into RAID
I currently have 1 JBOD volume including 2 x 3TB disks. Is it possible to change it into RAID without destroying it (e.g. by adding disk). If not is it possible: May I duplicate everything into new v...
You cannot convert two independent volumes into a single RAID and retain data from both.
There are a number of ways you can go about creating a larger RAID by adding drives. For example, add an 8TB drive to the existing primary JBOD (the one contaiing the home folders and apps) to make it RAID1. When that sync completes, swap the other drive in that group with another 8TB and expand it. You now have an 8TB RAID with the content of the original primary 3TB and enough space to move the content of the other 3TB JBOB. After transferring the data, you can destroy the 3TB JBOD and remove it, after which you can reformat it and add it back to the 8TB volume if you so desire.
Note that adding a 3TB drive to a RAID consisting of two 8TB drives will not work in many cases. But in your case, there will be a 3TB layer and a 5TB layer of the RAID, so you can add a 3TB to that initial 3TB layer. That layer will become RAID5 and the 5TB layer will remain RAID1.
This will work with any size and number of new drives where the resulting RAID will be at least large enough for the content of the two original JBOD volumes. Adding two 3TB to the original primary volume is, therefore, another option.
If you are having trouble following this, tell us what size drive(s) you intend to add and I can give a little more detail.
Thanks Sandshark for answer, but it is not addressing my situation. I try to be more clear.
Now i have:
1 volume including 2 disks. It's listed in GUI as JBOD. But i think more acurate will be to show it as RAID 0.
I would like to:
have 1 volume including 3 disks but protected with redundancy like RAID 2; preferably without destroying current volume.
My question:
What's the best way to do it? May I just add aditional 3TB disk, and will be able to choose proper RAID solution?
kemot wrote:
1 volume including 2 disks. It's listed in GUI as JBOD. But i think more acurate will be to show it as RAID 0.
RAID-0 and JBOD are in fact different. If you started with a one-disk volume and added a second disk, then you have JBOD. If you started with two disks, you could have created a RAID-0 volume that spanned both disks.
The difference:
- With JBOD, the space on the two disks is simply concatenated together.
- WIth RAID-0, the disks are actually striped.
To make this more concrete - when you copy a file to a two-disk RAID-0 volume, the file's data blocks are spread across both disks.
If you copy a file to a two-disk JBOD volume, the file's data blocks are only on one disk. Note the metadata might be on the other disk.
kemot wrote:
I would like to:
have 1 volume including 3 disks but protected with redundancy like RAID 2; preferably without destroying current volume.
You must mean RAID-5 here. The NAS doesn't do RAID-2 (AFAIK, no NAS supports it).
If your data fit on one 3 TB volume, then you could
- create a new volume with the new 3 TB drive
- create temporary shares on the new volume, and copy your data to them.
- uninstall any apps
- destroy the old volume
- select one of the original disks, and add it to the new volume for redundancy (RAID-1).
- select the second original disk, and you should be able to add it for capacity (converting the volume to RAID-5).
- reinstall any apps.
- rename the shares to the original names.
But your data doesn't fit on a 3 TB volume, so you can't do what you want non-destructively. The direct way to do it is to back up your data, do a factory reset with all disks in place, rebuild the NAS and restore the data.
I guess you could also back up about half your data, delete it from the NAS, and then use the above procedure to non-destructively handle the rest of it.
Thanks StephenB for answer.
Does unistalling apps and installing again retein its configuration?
For example I have resilio sync app with several shered folder throught resilio. I would like not to restore it manually.
If it is not possible by this method, you explain in other post method of moving apps by ssh. Would it be possible in this case?
I can reduce total data storage to 3TB.
kemot wrote:
Does unistalling apps and installing again retein its configuration?
No. The problem here is that the apps are stored on your data volume, so anything that destroys that volume also deletes the apps. Since there are some app-related settings on the OS partition, it is best to delete/reinstall, and not depend on the ReadyNAS application to clean everything up when the volume is deleted.
kemot wrote:
If it is not possible by this method, you explain in other post method of moving apps by ssh. Would it be possible in this case?
I can reduce total data storage to 3TB.
Sandshark has tested this with ssh, not me. Hopefully he will chime in. I don't think he's tested ssh with a jbod volume that spans two disks though.
Note you need to get below about 90% of 3 TB - that is about 2.4 TiB as reported in whe NAS web UI. That's why I suggested backing up half your data.
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