Hi all! My plan is to pull the almost full 1TB drive. Install a single 2TB drive, boot and let the Duo initialise itself. Upgrade to Radiator 4.1.7 (presumably inserting the new drive installs some old default Radiator). Install the old 1TB drive in an external USB enclosure, and hook it up to the Duo. Copy all data from the external drive to the new internal 2TB drive (using something running on the Duo, logged in with ssh if needed). Does this sound like a good plan? Thanks for any opinions! Patrik
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
Well, I suggest backing up the data to a separate device. If you don't want to do that, then you should use Linux Reader on a PC to access your data (from the USB enclosure). I don't think the NAS will be able to access the data volume directly from the USB port.
Also the current release is 4.1.13, not 4.1.7. Upgrade the firmware before you pull the old drive. Then the new drive will automatically have the new firmware installed.
Note that transferring files over the network is faster than transferring them over the duo's USB port.
You should have a backup for the NAS anyway btw, and all it takes is a 2 TB external drive, which is not expensive.
So my preferred approach is (a) back up the NAS data using frontview backup (b) upgrade the firmware (c) pull the old drive, leaving it intact (d) insert the new drive, and power up the NAS (e) after it formats, reinstall add-ons, recreate user accounts (f) restore the data using frontview backup (no need for ssh)
An alternative (and somewhat riskier plan) is (a) upgrade the firmware (b) pull the old drive, leaving it intact (c) insert the new drive, and power up the NAS (d) after it formats, reinstall add-ons, recreate user accounts (e) Use linux reader to access the data from your old drive (from a windows PC), and drag/drop the files to the NAS.
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
Some good advice there! I didn't realise that the Duo couldn't read its own disk if moved to a USB interface. Weird. I'll probably hook it to a Linux system (as opposed to Windows) and copy over Ethernet as you suggest. So Ethernet is quicker than USB on the Duo! Backup of the old disk isn't essential as it is itself a backup of my main PC's contents (at least the important stuff like photos). I'll update the firmware before the switch. Especially if the firmware is actually firmware (not on the disk), as you say, and installs on the new disk! Never used Frontview to backup/restore, but it looks straightforward. Thanks! Patrik
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
P.S: It would have been very nice to be able to just add the 2TB drive and have 3TB altogether. Even if split as separate network drives. But from what I read so far it seems it can't be done? (Any hacks to enable this, such as turning off the raid software altogether?)
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
You can create use both drives with 3 TB total space, but you need to do a factory reset to get there from where you are.
When you execute step d in my "preferred path" you have a short window of time (5-10 minutes) to set the NAS up for flexraid / RAID-0 (instead of the default xraid). You do that with the RAIDar software running on your PC.
Then after everything is done you add back the 1 TB drive, and set up a second data volume. You put some shares on each volume (since they are totally independent)
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
ok, I'll give that a shot, and to feel a bit safer I'll copy the old disk (from some external source) to the new, before adding back the old disk. Just in case the Duo decides to incorporate the old disk into some raid 0 arrangement... The new disk should be here tomorrow, so I'll update on how it went soon, hopefully. Thanks!
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
I guess I should update on the progress.
I pulled the old 1TB drive and hooked it up to a Windows system, and used the Diskinternals program to access the files.
After some messing about I managed to get the new 2TB drive to install as a non-Flex-RAID disk (just says RAID now in Frontview). Apparently the whole "hold reset in"-thing needs to start before powering up and end whilst powering up. LEDs will flash once at the start, and then once again after about 30 seconds, and THEN release the reset. Then use Raidar to access and specify non-FlexRAID.
I tried a variety of methods to get the files quickly over to the NAS, but it's never going to be quick! I copied from 1TB raid disk to another 1T ntfs disk with SATA (about 50MB per second there), then put the ntfs disk to the USB front port on the NAS. That gave about 7.5MB per second into the NAS. I copied from the 1TB raid disk to the NAS via Ethernet into the NAS, and got about 15MB/s. I took the ntfs disk and put it on a Mac and copied to the NAS over Ethernet, and got about 20MB/s. So I copied a little at a time trying different approaches. (So I didn't have to wait for days not knowing if it would ever work out.)
For this Duo v1 I think 20MB writing over Ethernet is about what you could expect at best..?
Ideal would have been a Mac version of the Diskinternals program, as the Mac seem to be more efficient writing to the NAS.
After messing about for a few days the whole lot was at last copied over!
After all the effort to change to non-FlexRAID, I'm now scared to put the extra 1GB disk in. Partially because I might have forgotten something on it, and partially because I'm worried the NAS will go off and do some weird initialisation and wipe everything. I don't trust it as much after having realised all the "automatic" stuff it does, and how hard it is to get to the data should something go wrong. Maybe it tries to stripe the data across the disks? It would be so much nicer if the NAS would communicate its intentions, and ask if you agreed!
I also realise how locked in the data is with so limited bandwidth, and I will keep doing what I have been doing before: Using the NAS as a backup, and central access point, for things that really primarily lives elsewhere (as opposed to the NAS being the primary storage, and backing up the NAS).
Sorry about the lengthy summary... And thanks for your help Stephen!
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
Hi, I have a similar problem. I have 2 ReadyNAS Duo v1 at home, the first with two 1Tb disks in X-Raid configuration and the other one with two 2Tb disks always in X-Raid configuration. I normally use the first NAS for my daily needs and periodically backup the first NAS to the second via Frontview Backup (Rsync mode). I don't know if this is the best way to use my 2 NAS so I really appreciate if someone would like to give me tips. By the way my question is which would be the right way to upgrade my disk dimensions in the first NAS in order to not lose any data/configuration. I'm going to buy now only one 2Tb HDD due to economic issues and 1/2 months later I'll buy the second one. Thanks
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
rcgrasso - you have two options.
(a) Power down, insert two new 2TB drives, power up. The NAS will rebuild. Then copy back the data from NAS 2 to NAS 1 (with frontview backup).
(b) remove/insert 1 2TB drive with the NAS running. Wait for the resync to complete, then repeat. After the second drive is inserted, it should expand to a 2 TB volume.
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
StephenB,
I did exactly your b process, as I was bumping against volume limit.
It got copied every which way, as expected.
But it is bizarrely not expanded to a 2TB volume, but has exactly the same size, so if I go in the admin menu, volune settings, I get a red rectangle "disk space 921GB (100%) of 921GB used. While underneath it correctly displays 2 green dots with "1859GB allocated"....
Might this be a problem of "partition" ? I am a bit lost as to what I should do to increase to 2TB actually useable...
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
Is disk spindown enabled? Also is journaling enabled?
Also, you can get more status info if you hover over the disks/volume green balls in RAIDar, also the volume/disk green balls at the bottom of Frontview.
I apologise, I have no idea what journalling is, nor where to find how to enable it...
Any chance you can shed more light on this, please ?
Look in system->performance. There are two settings there: disable full journaling and disable journaling. If either is checked, then uncheck. There's some screen shots you can use here: http://home.bott.ca/webserver/?p=550
The other way of course is to back up your data, do a factory install with both disks in place, and then reinstall your add-ons, recreate your shares, and restore data from backup. There is a factory default control in system->update which is a bit easier than using the paper clip procedure.
Re: Duo v1 from 1TB single drive to 2Tb single drive
Apologies for lack of response, I was away on a business trip. The good news is that as I switched on the server and logged into the admin function in order to look at the firmware I was using it flagged up "will now begin on-line expansion" and then another window "on-line expansion successful". And it shows 921GB of 1,846 (49%) used.
So, problem solved ! 🙂 Many thanks for your kind assistance !
