I am sure this question has been asked before, but I did not know how to properly look for the answer so here it goes:
The whole purpose of having RAID is to have a redundancy feature for your disks. But what happens when your NAS dies, since this XRAID-2 is proprietary for readynas, I assume I can not just take my 4 disks out of my ultra 4 and put them in QNAP, right?
So actually the quesion, is there a way to restore your data from these 4 disks ? Is it possible when I buy a new Readynas system, or do I have to buy exactly the same ultra 4, or what is the story?
The first part of the answer is that RAID is not a substitute for backup. Redundancy gives you some protection, but the real benefit is that your data remains available when you replace a failed drive. There are lots of failure modes where RAID is totally inadequate - the NAS dying is only one.
In general, you can migrate your disks within the same platform family. At present there are 4 families -Duo v1, NV+ v1, 600, x6, 1100 -Ultra, Ultra+,Pro, NVX , 1500, 2100, 3100, 3200, 4200 -Duo v2, VN+ v2 -RN100,300,500 (OS 6 units)
There are also ways to mount the RAID arrays in other linux systems - I recall seeing something posted on that for x86 NAS (like the ultra), but don't remember exactly where.
However, it is best to have a backup stored on a different device.
The proprietary stuff in X-RAID2 are the scripts used to automate expansion. That's all.
Using free utilities you can easily mount the data volume after connecting your disks to a standard Linux box, providing all your disks are fine (or one less the number in your array if it is redundant).
thanks for your replies, much appreciated. So x-raid2 is actually which raid then ? Because it works with 2 disks already, which meanms that would be RAID1. But whenever you insert another one, it becomes RAID5?
thanks for your replies, much appreciated. So x-raid2 is actually which raid then ? Because it works with 2 disks already, which meanms that would be RAID1. But whenever you insert another one, it becomes RAID5?
Exactly. Also if you have a six-slot unit you can expand it to RAID-6.
In addition to converting the array from RAID-1 to RAID-5 to RAID-6, XRAID-2 also handles increasing the disk size, by creating layers. For example, if you have 4 2TB drives, and then upgrade 2 of them to 3 TB, then XRAID-2 will create a new 1 TB RAID-1 layer to use the full disk capacity, and will merge that into your existing volume with the main layer still using RAID-5). You can do some of that with FlexRaid manually, but you'd end up with a 6 TB C volume and a 1 TB D volume.
Underneath, this all uses standard Linux tools (LVM in particular).
But what happens when your NAS dies, since this XRAID-2 is proprietary for readynas, I assume I can not just take my 4 disks out of my ultra 4 and put them in QNAP, right?
Despite of the fact it's standard Linux RAID and LVM ... every NAS vendor is still using it's own partitioning on the internal NAS HDD. This is prohibiting the storage migration between different vendors - and in many examples also for NAS from the same vendor. Very few exceptions apply.
But what happens when your NAS dies, since this XRAID-2 is proprietary for readynas, I assume I can not just take my 4 disks out of my ultra 4 and put them in QNAP, right?
Despite of the fact it's standard Linux RAID and LVM ... every NAS vendor is still using it's own partitioning on the internal NAS HDD. This is prohibiting the storage migration between different vendors - and in many examples also for NAS from the same vendor. Very few exceptions apply.
Regards, -Kurt.
Correct. You can't simply migrate disks to a newer system, but you can recover the data if the NAS itself dies but the disks are intact. I think the answers earlier in the thread make that pretty clear.
I am still thinkering about this 🙂 Is there a way to go from Xraid2 to RAID1 ( I now have 3*2TB discs inserted, not completely utilized yet, so I will just add another 2TB disc) With RAID1 everything is just mirrored on 2 disc pairs, so I do not have the hassle to rebuild everything under a linux system or whatever, just buy another 4 slot NAS, and I assume that RAID1 is universal, meanning if I plugin the 4 discs there it will work?
Is there a way to go from Xraid2 to RAID1 ( I now have 3*2TB discs inserted...
No. All you can do is a factory reset, and restore the data from backup. If you do that, and select flexraid than you could create 2 RAID-1 volumes on the NAS. Note you could start with 1 RAID-1 volume and add the second later on.
There's a short window (~5 minutes) after you start the reset when you can select flexraid. You do that with RAIDar.
One last question, if I would set the box to RAID1 mirroring. Let's say the box fails on me, should I just be able to plug out disk 1 and 2, and hook it up to any pc and data is available?
