Forum Discussion

Luminary

Sep 23, 2019

ReadyNAS 516 Best Practice

Two questions: First, I'm about to replace a disk (smaller disk with a bigger one). Is it best to shut down the box (to take out a 4TB drive and replace it with an 8TB) or can you simply do a hot sw...

Blues11

Luminary

Sep 24, 2019

Thanks for the user manual. I did a Boot in read-only, but no change. The system now has two messages about removing inactive volumes, one for disks 2 and 6 and the other for disks 2, 3, 4, and 6. Not having the resources to dig deeper into the failure and/or clone individual drives, I think I simply must resign myself to doing a reset and creating a new volume. When the new (replacement) 8TB drive arrives I think I'll remove the 4TB drive and configure the system with four 8TB drives using X-RAID. If the system install cleanly and the four drives pass muster, I hope my backup NAS can restore the data as of two nights ago to the newly created 516.

I've never tried to restore from the old NAS. Is there a method that's recommended?

StephenB

Guru - Experienced User

Sep 24, 2019

Blues11 wrote:

I've never tried to restore from the old NAS. Is there a method that's recommended?

I use rsync (creating one backup job per share). I run the backup jobs on the destination NAS (which is slightly easier to set up than the other way around).

Sandshark
Sensei
Sep 24, 2019
Two drives in one group and 4 in the other isn't a situation you re going to fully recover from. 5 and 1 is potentially recoverable. If you have a backup, just cut and run. Factory default and restore data.
- Blues11
  Luminary
  Sep 24, 2019
  I've gone back and forth on how to proceed with the situation. It's easy to be a little confused and/or my posts may be a problem too.
  
  Bottom Line: When I get the drive I intend to do a default setup with the four 8TB drives and start from scratch. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that A. all the drives will pass the formatting process and B. the restore from my backup works.
  
  Thank you.
  - Blues11
    Luminary
    Sep 27, 2019
    Suggestions for new drive usage.
    
    The drive that was supposed to arrive the same day, didn't. So, while they were trying to figure out where it was and when it would be delivered I decided to rebuild the server with the three good 8TB drives using X-RAID. (I'm running 6.10.1.) That gives it 15+TB and there'll probably be about half that used. Growth should not be terribly fast.
    
    So, the new 8TB drive arrived and I don't know how to proceed. After the problem with two bad drives I'm gun-shy to just add the new one.
    
    Questions:
    1. Is there a way to test the new drive without changing the current RAID setup? In case the new drive is not going to format I'd like to know it now.
    
    2. If I can determine that the drive is good, should I keep it in the box and save it? Or would it make more sense to use it as a spare? Although I'm a little fuzzy on what a spare does. Does it change the RAID so that two drives could fail and the system will be preserved? Does it make sense to just keep it spinning, adding to the heat in the unit?
    
    Thank you again for all of your help.