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Apologies for the probably stupid question. I have an RN214 running OS 6.10.2. I have 4 x 8TB drives--2 x Seagate IronWolf and 2 x Toshiba X300.
Per the attached screenshot, I'm apparently running the NAS in X-RAID and it also says I'm using RAID 6. Can you use X-RAID in RAID 6? Or, is the NAS reporting incorrect details?
As to the main reason for my post. One of my Seagate drives is failing. Seagate will do a warranty return, but I need to send them the failing drive, then they'll send the replacement which will talke about a week to 10 days. To me, this means switching off the NAS, pulling the drive, waiting for the replacement, installing it, and then switching the NAS back on.
So, firstly is this the right approach? And secondly, if I am running RAID 6 (block striping and double parity) then I believe my NAS should tolerate the swapping out of a drive. But as this is X-RAID, is my understanding correct?
Thank you to anyone who may be able to provide guidance.
BTW ... I don't have a backup of the NAS. The NAS is my archive / backup device and I don't have a spare 32TB of disk around to backup it up with.
X-RAID using 4 disks defaults to RAID5 so that should be RAID5. Are you sure you set the NAS volume on XRAID? or you have set it up on Flex-RAID? Flex-RAID RAID6 is possible.
Checking on your Data volume capacity it is on RAID6 having 14.5TB total size. If you are checking if you can get your disk out and get the benefit of having 2 parities. It would be best if you will check on the logs, check on initrd.log and see how the NAS was initialized. You can check on status.log as well to see if there are any chance that it was set on X-RAID after being set.
It is best to make backup first before doing any swaps and yes you will be able to run on degraded mode once you have taken out the disk.
X-RAID using 4 disks defaults to RAID5 so that should be RAID5. Are you sure you set the NAS volume on XRAID? or you have set it up on Flex-RAID? Flex-RAID RAID6 is possible.
Checking on your Data volume capacity it is on RAID6 having 14.5TB total size. If you are checking if you can get your disk out and get the benefit of having 2 parities. It would be best if you will check on the logs, check on initrd.log and see how the NAS was initialized. You can check on status.log as well to see if there are any chance that it was set on X-RAID after being set.
It is best to make backup first before doing any swaps and yes you will be able to run on degraded mode once you have taken out the disk.
As to the main reason for my post. One of my Seagate drives is failing. Seagate will do a warranty return, but I need to send them the failing drive, then they'll send the replacement which will talke about a week to 10 days. T
In the US Seagate offers an "advanced replacement" option - where they will ship you the replacement drive first, and then you return the failing one. I always use that option, as it gets me the drive more quickly. So check if that is available in your geography.
BTW ... I don't have a backup of the NAS. The NAS is my archive / backup device and I don't have a spare 32TB of disk around to backup it up with.
If the NAS is truly a backup device, then losing the data volume would be at most an inconvenience. Archival use is another matter - that implies to me that the NAS holds the only copy of the archived material. The bottom line is that RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe (not even RAID-6). The best way to do that is to back up the archived material on the NAS to another device.
For me backup isn't a matter of having "spare disks lying around". I build up my backup capacity as I increase storage in my primary NAS.
FWIW, you'd only need 16 TB at most to back up your entire current volume, and based on your screenshot you could back it up on an 8 TB drive at the moment. You can find 8 TB USB drives for less than $150 in the US.
