This topic has been marked solved and closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
Goal: to move my two disks and all data from Duo (2 disks redudant) to 212 (2 disks redudant)
1. Remove disk 1 from Duo
2. Format disk 1 in 212
3. Copy data from Duo disk 2 to 212 disk 1 via ethernet
4. Remove disk 1 from 212 and put aside
5. Remove disk 2 from Duo
6. Format disk 2 in 212
7. Remove disk 2 from 212
8. Insert disk 1 in 212
9. Insert disk 2 in 212, format, and allow it to be added to the volume for RAID1.
The process will work regardless of which drive you move first. If this is a DuoV1, then moving drive 2 first may be the better solution because of the way OS4.1.x creates a RAID. I'm not as familiar with that as @StephenB , who may want to add something here.
Note that you have no data redundancy during this entire process, so insuring your backup is up to date before proceeding is recommended. Of course, if you trust your backup sufficiently, then you could just move both drives to the 212, format and create a volume, and restore data from backup. But the process above maintains two copies of the data, counting the backup, where restore from backup does not.
When you move the second drive to the 212, do it with the power on so the OS does not get confused by the content on it at boot time. For additional insurance, you could "unformat" the drive using a PC to simply remove all partitions, but hot insertion is still the best method.
If you have no current backup, then perhaps you should coinsider buying two new drives for the 212 and relegating the Duo and its drives to backup duty.
Goal: to move my two disks and all data from Duo (2 disks redudant) to 212 (2 disks redudant)
1. Remove disk 1 from Duo
2. Format disk 1 in 212
3. Copy data from Duo disk 2 to 212 disk 1 via ethernet
4. Remove disk 1 from 212 and put aside
5. Remove disk 2 from Duo
6. Format disk 2 in 212
7. Remove disk 2 from 212
8. Insert disk 1 in 212
9. Insert disk 2 in 212, format, and allow it to be added to the volume for RAID1.
The process will work regardless of which drive you move first. If this is a DuoV1, then moving drive 2 first may be the better solution because of the way OS4.1.x creates a RAID. I'm not as familiar with that as @StephenB , who may want to add something here.
Note that you have no data redundancy during this entire process, so insuring your backup is up to date before proceeding is recommended. Of course, if you trust your backup sufficiently, then you could just move both drives to the 212, format and create a volume, and restore data from backup. But the process above maintains two copies of the data, counting the backup, where restore from backup does not.
When you move the second drive to the 212, do it with the power on so the OS does not get confused by the content on it at boot time. For additional insurance, you could "unformat" the drive using a PC to simply remove all partitions, but hot insertion is still the best method.
If you have no current backup, then perhaps you should coinsider buying two new drives for the 212 and relegating the Duo and its drives to backup duty.
Thanks very much for the suggestions and I confirm it is a DuoV1.
So I started to implement the process. So far I have done:
1. Remove disk from DuoV1-bay2.
2. Insert the disk in 212-bay1 and format/create volume. Admin Page now shows 212-bay1 disk as "type: JBOD" and the X-Raid button is green.
3. Copy data from DuoV1-bay1 to 212-bay1 disk via ethernet.
If I understand correctly, you are saying that from here I just need to:
4. Remove disk from DuoV1-bay1.
5. Insert disk in 212-bay2 while 212 is turned On and accept RAID1
i.e there is no need for pre-formatting or creating avolume in 212-bay2 as the 212 will do it everything automatically and without destroying the data in 212-bay1.
If I understand correctly, you are saying that from here I just need to:
4. Remove disk from DuoV1-bay1.
5. Insert disk in 212-bay2 while 212 is turned On and accept RAID1
i.e there is no need for pre-formatting or creating avolume in 212-bay2 as the 212 will do it everything automatically and without destroying the data in 212-bay1.
To be clear - you end up with one RAID-1 volume that comprises two disks. So you don't want to create (or destroy) any RN212 volumes in this process.
But after you hot-insert the second disk in the RN212, you will need to select it on the volumes page and format it. This doesn't touch the volume or the first disk, but you will need to do it before the second disk is added to the volume (converting the volume to RAID-1).
This is a data safety measure in the RN212. When a formatted disk is added to the volume, any data already on it will be destroyed. Some new NAS owners didn't realize this, and were intending the NAS to add the files on the disk to the volume. So the RN212 uses the format control to make sure you really intend to destroy any data on the new disk.
@Sandshark stressed the need for backup. That's because disks do fail, and RAID simply isn't enough to keep your data safe. Many folks here have learned this lesson the hard way. If you purchase another disk, you could continue to use your old Duo as a backup to your RN212. You can set up backup jobs in one of the NAS to automatically update the the copies on the Duo every day. Then (perhaps later on), you could hot-insert a second disk in the Duo to give you RAID protection of the backup.
The Duo can't handle disks bigger than 2 TB (unlike the RN212). You should use a NAS-purposed drive - either the WD RED+ WD20EFRX or the 2 TB Seagate Ironwolf. Avoid the WD20EFAX, as it uses a technology called SMR that isn't well suited to RAID. Current US prices for this would be about $70, so it is very affordable and convenient.
You're welcome. I'm glad it all went smoothly and am always happy to help when I can. Always nice to see things work as they should. We see many posts here where that's not the case.
