Upgrading ReadyNAS RN3130

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Sandshark wrote:

If all the drives currently in the NAS are of the same vintage as the one that has failed, then a second failure during re-sync, which would render your volume dead, is certainly a possibility.  And swapping drives incrementally is going to triple the extra stress of a sync.  So going with a complete new volume is that way I'd go.  You can backup the configuration file, too.  Just make sure you re-install any apps before you restore the configuration.  But even if you are going with all new drives, you don't need to start with all four.  Starting with just what you need spaces out the purchases, which affects your investment, but perhaps more importantly insures all the drives aren't from the same lot and starts putting life on them incrementally, so near-term failure of a second drive is less likely down the road.  One advantage of XRAID is that there is no need to fill a unit to start to insure you get full use from the drives once it is full.

 

Whether or not you really need yet another backup of backup data is something you can decide.  But having had to inform folks here that their precious family photos are lost because they trusted that RAID (and, more importantly, the hardware on which it resides) is bulletproof, I can say that any data that only exists on the NAS is vulnerable.  Over the years since my first purchase of an Infrant NV, I've only lost a volume once, though I came close when another went read-only.  But that I did have a backup of what was important to me saved my bacon.

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I am not against getting an external and moving everything to it almost as a temporary crutch. I can then keep a second copy of mission critical data stored on it for double safe keeping.

The ideal solution sounds like; external, move data to it, verify data, swap all four drives, reconfigure the RN3130, move said data back.

My biggest concern now would be if the RN3130 will support considerably larger drives than what are currently in it. It is running four 4tb drives. I would likely go to something much larger (mentioned 14tb) and be done for ever pending any other failures.

I really appreciate the help!