Re: RN214 Drive issue -- Can I move them into 6 bay system

RichWilson · ‎2018-04-24

I have two RN214 with 4 drives in each system, set for Raid 5

In one system, the drives have filled up, and the disks are not seen. With error saying a new drive needs added.

Since the drives bays are full, can I move these 4 drives into a 6 bay ReadyNAS, and add a drive, allowing for extra space, and then delete what is the problem?

Or... Can I pull one of the 4 drives (each 2TB) and replace one with 4/6TB drive?

RichWilson · ‎2018-04-24

BTW

I was thinking of getting the RN426 - 6 Bay, and migrating to this model from the RN214.

StephenB · ‎2018-04-24

@RichWilson wrote:

I was thinking of getting the RN426 - 6 Bay, and migrating to this model from the RN214.

You can certainly migrate disks from the RN214 to the RN426. The NAS boot process will convert the OS partition to run Intel instead of Arm, which is pretty cool. One caveat is that many apps are platform-specific, and the boot process doesn't touch them. So you should uninstall apps before migration, and then reinstall them post migration. BTW, the NAS configuration (shares, backup jobs, network settings, etc) won't change.

@RichWilson wrote:

Or... Can I pull one of the 4 drives (each 2TB) and replace one with 4/6TB drive?

You need to upgrade two drives to see any space increase- the capacity rule for single-redundancy XRAID is "sum the disks and subtract the largest.

So this also works.

Upgrading one drive to 6 TB doesn't increase space
Upgrading the second will increase space by 4 TB
Upgrading the third will increase space by another 4 TB.

Keep in mind that once you upgrade a drive to 6 TB, you can't upgrade a second drive to a smaller size (like 4 TB). You can replace a drive with one that matches the original size, or you can upgrade it to be >= the size of the largest disk in the system.

The RAID array is most vulnerable when you are expanding it, so it is best to update your backup before you begin. (Or whenever you are manipulating the disks - I dropped one once. Very bad feeling when you do that.).

RichWilson · ‎2018-04-26

Ok.. I made the purchase of the 426, and two additonal 6TB drives (the other 4 where 6TB drives).

Put all the drives in with the two newer ones in the bay 5 and 6. I belive the others are 1-4 in order.

I was able to do the firmware upgrade via Raidar, but I can't connect to the admin page. See the attached for what I see.

It appears the drives are properly seated and recognized, but not added to the pool?

StephenB · ‎2018-04-26

You were able to access the web ui before you moved the drives?

RichWilson · ‎2018-04-26

To be honest, I'm not sure. I put the drives in before I powered it on.

I've got a support ticket opened. It appears they will need to do the upgrade, because of the Arm to Intel change.

Thanks!

mdgm-ntgr · ‎2018-04-26

Downgrades from 6.9.x to pre-6.9.x firmware are not supported:

[2018/04/27 04:52:34 UTC] Root OS arch (arm) does not match flash (x86_64).
[2018/04/27 04:52:34 UTC] OS version mismatch [os: 6.9.3(1) / flash: 6.7.1(1493061041)]
[2018/04/27 04:52:34 UTC] Migrate from ARM box.
[2018/04/27 04:52:48 UTC] Updated from ReadyNASOS 6.9.3 (ReadyNASOS) to 6.7.1 (ReadyNASOS).
[2018/04/26 21:10:56 UTC] Updated from ReadyNASOS 6.7.1 (ReadyNASOS) to 6.9.3 (ReadyNASOS).

Is your data backed up?

This looks like a data recovery situation:

[27021.004976] BTRFS error (device md127): bad tree block start 15675119592344921376 20397372899328
[27021.005237] BTRFS error (device md127): bad tree block start 13247143652323685472 20397372899328
[27021.005247] BTRFS warning (device md127): failed to read tree root
[27021.005511] BTRFS error (device md127): bad tree block start 6405015776776349577 20397370966016
[27021.005774] BTRFS error (device md127): bad tree block start 17625023173569810370 20397370966016
[27021.005784] BTRFS warning (device md127): failed to read tree root
[27021.006021] BTRFS error (device md127): bad tree block start 11209951803827852680 20397367918592
[27021.006248] BTRFS error (device md127): bad tree block start 8544901722416997126 20397367918592
[27021.006252] BTRFS warning (device md127): failed to read tree root
[27021.024872] BTRFS error (device md127): open_ctree failed

Data recovery attempts (support would explain what the costs involved are and that the attempt may ultimate prove completely unsuccessful) are best done with disks in a x86 ReadyNAS such as your RN426 as those are more powerful so I would leave your disks in the RN426.

So if you don't have a backup you might need to get some disks for the RN214 and provide that storage as a backup destination for a data recovery attempt.

As you've got 4x6TB disks that are very full, it'd be best to put 4x8TB (or larger capacity) disks in the RN214 as 6TB disks in RAID-5 wouldn't provide enough storage. It's best to keep volumes less than 85% full.