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Xraid-2 with OS6.x will not allow swapping of same sized drive.
Need your expert Netgear guru help please. I have a 6-drive RAID 5 setup in a Readynas Pro running upgraded OS6.x Continues to work great for a decade. The drives are as follows: WD Red Pr...
Thanks for the advice.
1. I do not remember what format that new drive was in. Not sure if NTFS and blank, or still with old data and specific format from the NAS it was originally in.
Question: With OS6, what exact format of NTFS should it be in? I think the NetGear NAS internally reformats it anyway once it is inserted. It must, since there are various partitions on it. Not sure it matters, since I will sector-by-sector clone it.
2. I am using the WD 6TB Red Pros, which I think are CMR? Not the plain Red or Red plus.
3. Good advice on powering down first before cloning the drive.
I will try that after it finishes the resynch it is presently doing.
Thanks. Much appreciate the help and confirmations.
Just checked the replacement 6TB drive I was trying to use, and it was formatted NTFS.
Guessing that is why it was rejected from the array.
I suspect that in OS6.x, the only reason the old drive was accepted is because it was in the Netgear format already.
The replacement 6TB drive was in NTFS, and thus was not accepted into the array.
So what should a new drive be formatted in, so that it is accepted into the array, and the RAID 5 array rebuilds that drive and synchs? Obviously not NTFS. Maybe the drive needs to be NOT formatted?
I faintly remember something else now from years ago. And that is even when completely powering down, the NAS somehow remembers what drive was where, so when you boot up, it knows if a drive was pulled while unplugged. And that destroys the array. Or am I just imagining this?
Readynaspro wrote:
So what should a new drive be formatted in, so that it is accepted into the array, and the RAID 5 array rebuilds that drive and synchs? Obviously not NTFS. Maybe the drive needs to be NOT formatted?
NOT formatted. Or you can select it from the graphic in the center of the volume tab, and then format it in the NAS. Then it will be added to the array.
Readynaspro wrote:
I faintly remember something else now from years ago. And that is even when completely powering down, the NAS somehow remembers what drive was where, so when you boot up, it knows if a drive was pulled while unplugged. And that destroys the array. Or am I just imagining this?
Removing one drive from XRAID will degrade the array, but not destroy it.
But there is some metadata on each disk partition that identifies the array and has other information about the RAID (stored in the mdadm superblock).
OK, will try inserting the new drive UNFORMATTED.
Thanks again for your assistance with this.
I powered down the NAS. Yanked the old drive, made a sector-by-sector clone (which took 11 hours on USB 3 with 6TB), inserted it into the NAS, and powered up. The NAS did indeed recognize it as the old drive. No resynching, or anything else. Everything worked normally. It also avoided the 84 hour (4-day) resynch time on my 64 TB stack.
This is the ONLY solution that I know of (thanks to Superuser StephenB) that fools the NAS into not recognizing that anything changed.
Problem solved. Thanks.
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