Re: adding disc to rn204 unit

rodcrit · ‎2015-09-01

Thinking ahead so I can get some idea of what I am doing.

I am probably going to start off with a 2 disc system in an rn204 unit. It is probable that in the future I will want to add a 3rd disc.

is this easy? some reports I have read say that the disc has to be formatted before it can be used, but the manuals say that when formatting a disc, ALL the drives will be formatted - thus clearing out all data.

Can a 3rd drive be inserted ( newly bought ) and will the system incorporate it while still having the system usable?

rodcrit · ‎2015-09-03

OK thanks for those responses. I am now in the process of purchasing a rn204 system with 3 discs to start with, so shouldnt need to add another disc for some time.

the only minor problem I am having getting my head round is that data should be backed up before doing things. yes I can see the sense in that, and I do back up my PC stuff on regular basis, but where do I back up say 4gb of data on my NAS to - other than getting another NAS system !

anyway - thanks for response.

View solution in original post

mdgm-ntgr · ‎2015-09-01

When you do a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything) all the disks are wiped.

When you add a disk to the system whilst the NAS is running if the disk is blank it will be wiped.

If you want to add a used disk you should connect the disk to a PC and delete the partitions off it first, but not format it. The NAS needs to partition the disk etc.

Yes you can add the disk while the NAS is running, but the performance will be reduced until the array has finished rebuilding.

I would advise you to update your backup before adding the 3rd drive and check to see if there are any alerts about SMART errors with the existing disks in the NAS.

StephenB · ‎2015-09-01

@mdgm wrote:

Yes you can add the disk while the NAS is running, but the performance will be reduced until the array has finished rebuilding.

Just to clarify - if you add the disk while the NAS is powered down, the array is rebuilt when you power it up. So no matter how you add the disk, performance is reduced until the array is rebuild/expanded. On the RN200 series the NAS should certainly be useable.

I always suggest hot-inserting the new disk with the NAS running - the NAS firmware then detects the insertion (and if you are replacing, the removal). If you do it with the NAS powered down the NAS has to figure out that the disk was added (or changed).

I would advise you to update your backup before adding the 3rd drive and check to see if there are any alerts about SMART errors with the existing disks in the NAS.

Too many people think that RAID redundancy is enough to protect your data. If you care about it, you should always have more than one copy on different devices. Otherwise at some point you will lose it. The NAS has backup capabilities built into it for a reason

The data on the NAS is more vulnerable when you are adding drives, so it is particularly important to update the backup before manipulating disks. It's also good practice to update backups before upgrading firmware. While these are usually safe operations, they still occasionally fail (and backups are much less expensive than data recovery services).

rodcrit · ‎2015-09-03

OK thanks for those responses. I am now in the process of purchasing a rn204 system with 3 discs to start with, so shouldnt need to add another disc for some time.

the only minor problem I am having getting my head round is that data should be backed up before doing things. yes I can see the sense in that, and I do back up my PC stuff on regular basis, but where do I back up say 4gb of data on my NAS to - other than getting another NAS system !

anyway - thanks for response.

StephenB · ‎2015-09-03

@rodcrit wrote:

the only minor problem I am having getting my head round is that data should be backed up before doing things. yes I can see the sense in that, and I do back up my PC stuff on regular basis, but where do I back up say 4gb of data on my NAS to - other than getting another NAS system !

anyway - thanks for response.

I think you meant TB.

Options include

(a) USB drives. A 4 TB USB 3.0 drive costs about $125 today, 6 TB around $200.

(b) If you have empty drive slots in desktop PCs, you can install dedicated hard drives for NAS backup in them.

(c) Or use another NAS (perhaps an RN104 - $119 plus the drives. jbod mode is a bit cheaper than raid, and in my opinion enough for the backup).

(d) Use a cloud service like crashplan (~$60 per year),

I've done (b) in the past. Actually the drives are still in place, and the backup scripts still running. But they are getting old, and I don't plan to replace them.

More recently I am using (c) and (d). Crashplan has been working out, but I view it as disaster insurance, not as the main backup.

Data recovery from Netgear starts at $200 (and I think the longer it takes them the more it costs).

rodcrit · ‎2015-09-03

Thank you - there are some interesting ideas there - particularly a) an b).

I do have a two disc external 'StarTech' unit which conects to PC USB port. do you know if I can use that as an external back up destination? I have been reading the software guide for ReadyNAS and it seems to suggest that can back up to PC ( presumably over network ) and it mentions USB stick. am wondering if my startech device connected to usb an also be used somehow - not sure how it would be addressed though.

StephenB · ‎2015-09-03

You should be able to create a windows share on the startech, and use that as the ReadyNAS backup job target. Or create a robocopy script, and run it on the PC ("pulling" files to the NAS instead of "pushing" them from the NAS). I used the robocopy approach myself.

There are some advantages to hosting the USB drive on a PC. Frequently performance is better, and PCs deal with drive removal better than most linux systems (including the NAS).

rodcrit · ‎2015-09-03

Hi StephenB

You have given me a lot to think about - and thanks.

I will be starting to set up my NAS system tomorrow when it arrives, and I will be playing with it for quite a few days I think.

I will be using it mainly to securely save a lot of important docs and files which currently reside on PCs and although backed up regularly, are still vunerable to disc failure. the other use will be to store music and films/videos for streaming over my home network to tele and hifi.

I can see that I will be rather busy in the coming days getting to grips with this beast. but am excited at the prospect as well. I am a 72 year old system software analyst and implementer so I know a bit about this environment - although my knowledge may be about 15 years out of date. remind me - what is this thing called the 'internet' ?

thanks again and wish me luck.

Rod

StephenB · ‎2015-09-03

@rodcrit wrote:

...I can see that I will be rather busy in the coming days getting to grips with this beast. but am excited at the prospect as well. I am a 72 year old system software analyst and implementer so I know a bit about this environment - although my knowledge may be about 15 years out of date...

thanks again and wish me luck.

Rod

I have a software background myself, but don't do coding anymore. The NAS is a fun sandbox (and it is ok to enable ssh, just be careful what you do with it). BTRFS is an interesting read, definitely worth getting the main concepts there. RAID itself hasn't changed that much over the years.

There is a VM available if you really want to play (and of course that's a whole other sandbox you could explore while you are at it).

Good luck for sure, and hopefully we'll see more posts.