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Hi, I currently have 2 x 500GB discs in my Duo which have been working fine for a number of years. I now want to update the discs to increase storage capacity (and also just part of routine maintenance - better to replace while healthy than wait for a disk failure!).
Is the process as simple as powering the ReadyNAS down, removing disc 2, replacing it with the new 1TB disc and waiting for a resync to complete and then do the same for disc 1, or is there more to it than that? Also, any 1TB HDD recommendations? I don't want to break the bank and won't notice marginal speed differences etc. I just want something reliable which delivers acceptable performance.
I now have a 1 TB disk in bay 1 and a 500GB disk in bay 2 which i hope to replace tonight so both dsks will be 1TB each. Will it automatically allocate the full 1TB to the shares once the second disk is replaced?
When you replace the drive, the system will first sync the existing 500 GB volume. After that it should prompt for a reboot and expand to the full 1 TB.
Is the process as simple as powering the ReadyNAS down, removing disc 2, replacing it with the new 1TB disc and waiting for a resync to complete and then do the same for disc 1, or is there more to it than that?
Actually you don't need to power down. It's fine to hot-swap disk 1, wait for resync, and then hot-swap disk 2. There likely will be a reboot during the second disk resync (so look for a prompt for that).
I assume the order is important then, swapping disc 1 first and then disc 2?
Would either one of the 500GB discs be useful as an emergency backup? Say it all goes wrong, would I be able to revert to the original disc 1 for my data or would I be better off copying everything to an external USB HDD before changing discs?
Would either one of the 500GB discs be useful as an emergency backup?
Yes. Disk 1 will still contain all your data when you remove it. The NAS would boot up with the original disk 1 alone, and you could even access the data on a windows system (or a linux system) if you have the right tools.
Disk 2 would also contain the data, and the system would also boot up with the original disk 2 alone. However, it is harder to recover the data from the parity disk alone (from another linux system or a windows system). That's why I'd start by removing disk 1 btw.
The NAS would probably have problems with booting up with both original disks installed, it likely would think they are out of sync.
...would I be better off copying everything to an external USB HDD before changing discs?
In general I do advise people to have full backups (and I keep them myself).
In this case you have working disks, and a reasonable fallback if there's an issue with the resyncs, Though of course it wouldn't hurt to have a backup..
I've now ordered the 1TB WD drives you suggested - let's hope for a smooth upgrade 🙂
One more question regarding the backup situation: assuming all goes well, would it be possible in a few months to swap the new 1TB disc 1 (let's call it disc X) for another (3rd) 1TB disc and then keep disc X as an emergency back up. I am thinking that if possible, I could then rotate the dics around periodically so that should anything disastrous happen and both of the the discs in the ReadyNAS fail, I always have a 3rd disc witha recent copy of the data?
Or would it be more sensible to just utilise the 3rd disk as a USB drive and copy the data from the ReadyNAS to the USB drive periodically?
RAID is useful, but it's not a backup solution. If used correctly redundant RAID levels will greatly reduce the likelihood of needing to do a full restore from backup.
Backing up to a USB disk is much safer than swapping internal disks in the NAS.
Quick update - I replaced Disk 1 with the new 1TB disk last night and it resynced without any problems
I now have a 1 TB disk in bay 1 and a 500GB disk in bay 2 which i hope to replace tonight so both dsks will be 1TB each. Will it automatically allocate the full 1TB to the shares once the second disk is replaced? Currently it shows half of that, presumably because it is limited by the smaller capacity disk and I just wanted to know if I need to do anything or if the expansion will be automatic once it recognises both disks as being 1TB.
I now have a 1 TB disk in bay 1 and a 500GB disk in bay 2 which i hope to replace tonight so both dsks will be 1TB each. Will it automatically allocate the full 1TB to the shares once the second disk is replaced?
When you replace the drive, the system will first sync the existing 500 GB volume. After that it should prompt for a reboot and expand to the full 1 TB.
I've just swapped the second disk so will report back in about 5/6 hours. It is currently syncing as if it is a 500GB disk as you said it would, so hopefully all on track for a successful upgrade 🙂
I didnt get a prompt for the reboot (maybe didn't wait long enough after resync?) so I rebooted manually after which I got the message saying first stage of expansion had succeeded and asking me to reboot again. Expansion then took another 10-15 mins so now all completed successfully.
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