Can I move my hard drive from a RN102 to a RN312 and keep all the contents?

[SisyphusBond]

I'm not sure if the title is quite clear on what I mean, but I didn't want to get too wordy.

I've got a RN102 with a 4TB drive in that is fairly full (about 75%). I've just bought a RN312 as an upgrade, and wondered if I can simply move the hard drive over and keep all the data somehow, without having to buy another hard drive as an intermediate storage?

I realise it might be a long shot, but as the main difference that I could see was just the processor I thought it might be worth checking.

[BrianL2]

Hi SisyphusBond,

Welcome to the community!

This can be done and you're right about the processor difference between RN102 and RN312. Migrating or moving the disks is possible just ensure that you have the same firmware version on both or newer on the RN312 chassis. 

Let me know if you have further questions.

Kind regards,

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

[StephenB]

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@BrianL2 wrote:

The only way is to have your all data backed up somewhere, insert the drives to the new RN312 and perform factory reset. You're right about the processor difference between them. Migrating or moving the disks is not possible.

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Actually it is supposed to work (disk migration from RN100 to RN300 or better).  Was this feature deprecated?

[kohdee]

This feature was not deprecated. 

When you take your disks from RN100 and place them into RN300, during boot, the chassis acknowledges that the disks came from a different architecture and it will update the files to the chassis version. Make sure your chassis are on the same version, or the RN300 is on the latest and the RN100 is on a version lower than the RN300, so it will do an update. 

[SisyphusBond]

Does this updating take a while? I tried it yesterday and the 312 just flashed its power LED until I gave up after 10 minutes or so.

[BrianL2]

Hi SisyphusBond,

I suggest you leave it until the LED becomes stable. I couldn't tell how long but the migration should be flawless between these models. 

Let me know if you have further question.

Kind regards,

BrianL
NETGEAR Community Team

[SisyphusBond]

Well it's been going for 8 hours, so far...

[SisyphusBond]

I had another thought. Could it be because I'm not trying to migrate it to a pure "diskless" system? The manual only takes about migrating to a diskless NAS.

I had installed one temporary hard drive to upgrade the firmware, and then just swapped the disks. Could it perhaps be that the 312 is still expecting the temporary drive to be there somehow?

Can I somehow downgrade it back to "diskless"? I can't seem to use the "destroy" volume option in the settings with a single drive in there. Factory reset I would also assume to reboot and start formatting the temporary drive already in there?

[SisyphusBond]

Reading here:

http://www.rnasguide.com/2011/03/26/migrating-your-disks-from-one-readynas-to-another-readynas-on-th...

I noticed a bit about OS Reinstall from the boot menu. Would that work, perhaps?

[StephenB]

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@SisyphusBond wrote:

I had another thought. Could it be because I'm not trying to migrate it to a pure "diskless" system? The manual only takes about migrating to a diskless NAS.

I had installed one temporary hard drive to upgrade the firmware, and then just swapped the disks. Could it perhaps be that the 312 is still expecting the temporary drive to be there somehow?

Did you power down, remove the temporary, add the original disks, and then power up?

[SisyphusBond]

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@StephenB wrote:

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@SisyphusBond wrote:

I had another thought. Could it be because I'm not trying to migrate it to a pure "diskless" system? The manual only takes about migrating to a diskless NAS.

I had installed one temporary hard drive to upgrade the firmware, and then just swapped the disks. Could it perhaps be that the 312 is still expecting the temporary drive to be there somehow?

Did you power down, remove the temporary, add the original disks, and then power up?

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That's exactly what I did, yes.

I tried to reinstall the OS after adding the original disk. That seems to have had some success, as the 312 now boots and I can see the files through ReadyCloud. I can't for the life of me seem to get through to it with anything on my LAN, thought.

[SisyphusBond]

I don't suppose there any further suggestions? At the moment the only option I can see is to buy another hard drive and start afresh with the new NAS, then copy over the old files. That's £125 I didn't really want to spend just yet, though.

[StephenB]

Did you try looking at the status in RAIDar? (if it shows up, confirm the IP address).

Does it respond to ping?

[SisyphusBond]

To be honest I've now put in an order for another drive, as I was getting impatient (my kids DVDs have been ripped to a Plex Server on the NAS) and wanted to ensure delivery promptly.

I'll do my best to test your suggestion anyway though, in case it can help anyone else who might encounter the same problem.

I should add that it appears on my router's "Attached Devices" correctly as far as I can tell. It even accepts the forced IP address I set if I activate it. I just can't seem to access it with anything except network drives.

I tried accessing it with SSH via Putty too. It asks me for my password but when I put it in the terminal closes abruptly.

[StephenB]

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@SisyphusBond wrote:

I tried accessing it with SSH via Putty too. It asks me for my password but when I put it in the terminal closes abruptly.

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Was ssh enabled?  You are using root for the username?

[SisyphusBond]

SSH was enabled, yes. Though I think I was using "admin" to log in (it's been a while since I last tried it, so I was rusty).

I'll give that a shot with "root" when I try checking it with RAIDar (probably this evening).

[SisyphusBond]

Okay. I've just tried both of those things. Using SSH with root worked fine, and the NAS is visible to RAIDar (both after reinstalling the OS after swapping the drives). I still can't access the admin page, or any of the apps installed (e.g. Plex, Bittorrent Sync, etc.) from the direct links I had set up.

I'm not too sure where that leaves me or if it helps. I'm not too bothered personally, as having been pushed into buying another drive I'm planning on using it when it arrives tomorrow anyway. I've no objection to running more tests in the meantime if it's liable to be of any help to others though.

[StephenB]

I suspect the apps would be a problem - the NAS itself can migrate to x86, but the apps would remain arm.  Probably we should have said to uninstall the apps first.

The apps might also be the reason the web page won't start.

[SisyphusBond]

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@StephenB wrote:

I suspect the apps would be a problem - the NAS itself can migrate to x86, but the apps would remain arm.  Probably we should have said to uninstall the apps first.

The apps might also be the reason the web page won't start.

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Ah. I wonder if that's it, as Plex at the very least is an ARM specific version I think.

I may give that a try today before going for the extra drive. Would it lose all the settings and so forth, though?

[StephenB]

Netgear can probably tell you how to remove the apps with ssh.  Hopefully one of them will chime in.

You would lose plex settings (and the other app settings too).

[SisyphusBond]

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@StephenB wrote:

Netgear can probably tell you how to remove the apps with ssh.  Hopefully one of them will chime in.

You would lose plex settings (and the other app settings too).

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I might as well give it a try to find out, given that I'm probably planning on a new drive and fresh start anyway.

[SisyphusBond]

Just as a brief update, I ran out of time to check this and the drive has now been formatted. So my apologies to anyone who comes to this thread looking for answers to a similar question, but hopefully it at leaves something worth trying if you do.