I bought a ReadyNAS Duo V2 and have it loaded with 3TB WD drives. I'm running on XRAID 2. (Default as shipped) My 1st drive is now full and it's being automatically backed up to my 2nd Drive (3TB WD again). All this is exactly what I want.
I now want to remove my 2nd drive and put it away for storage. (the data on my 1st drive is static, so I only need to back-up once).
And then want to add a 3rd drive into the Duo's 2nd slot for additional data storage.(Dynamical data) But I don't want the data from drive to be backed up on drive 3.
How to I add it and change the RAID setting, so it doesn't automatically does the "Recovery" ? The info in the Software Manual states that I need to perform a factory reboot, with all the information being lost. (Not looking forward to this)
You have to do a factory reset (wipes all data, settings, everything) to change RAID modes between X-RAID2 and Flex-RAID (e.g. RAID-0). There is no way around that. After initiating the factory reset via the Dashboard or the boot menu you then use RAIDar (http://www.readynas.com/downloads) within 10 minutes to choose the RAID mode.
Anyway RAID is not a backup. See Preventing Catastrophic Data Loss. A 2-disk X-RAID2 array has redundancy/high-availability which is quite a different thing to a backup. Your RAID array is vulnerable to things such as accidental file deletion which a good backup strategy would provide protection against. Then you have to consider that SATA connectors are designed for a limited number of pulls and handling disks bare there is a risk of damaging them without realising it through electro-static discharge. If you want to backup your data do so to e.g. a USB disk, another NAS, the cloud or some place else.
