Taking advantage of the freebie 3138 replacement that Netgear notified me of due to possible shortened life of the 3138 and my question would be how to transfer settings and drives from my current 3138 to the new one without losing data. I currently don't have a location to move all the data stored on the 3138 until the drive swap is complete.
The system boots from the drives, and all settings are on the drives (not the internal flash). So all you need to do is power down, transfer the disks (ideally preserving slot order), and then power up.
If the new system has newer firmware installed, then it will upgrade your OS on the first boot. If it has older firmware, then the system will upgrade the flash from your disks. If you want to avoid that, then you can begin by starting with a scratch disk in the new system, and then install the same firmware as you have running on the old NAS. Then power down, and migrate the disks as described above.
