RAID 1 for ReadyNAS Ultra 2

Limerick wrote:

Hello all, I have just received my ReadyNAS Ultra 2 and I wish to perform a simple RAID 1. But I would like to know it it will be possible, in cas of a hardware failure of the ReadyNAS, to take one of the 2 HDD and just plug into a PC and then find all my data. Or is there any controler or softaware which builds the RAID 1 that will require to put the HDD in a similar NAS in order to recover the data ? Thanks for your help, Lim.

The default XRAID-2 is RAID-1 on the two-slot units (on the larger units it expands to RAID-5 or RAID-6 as you add drives). The underlying file format is Linux (ext), so a Windows PC will not recognize the format without special tools. However, it can be done - if you search the forum, you will find some posts on the topic.

The main thing is that RAID is not a substitute for backup. Ideally you would maintain backups on drives formatted so you could read them on a standard PC.

Hi Stephen,

Thanks for the answer.
In fact my RAID 1 is supposed to be the backup.

I will look for such tool to easily read ext file format from within Windows (perhaps you have one favorite...?), but is it possible to use a NTFS a FAT 32 format when installing the RAID 1 on the Ultra 2 ?

Limerick wrote:
Hi Stephen, Thanks for the answer. In fact my RAID 1 is supposed to be the backup. I will look for such tool to easily read ext file format from within Windows (perhaps you have one favorite...?), but is it possible to use a NTFS a FAT 32 format when installing the RAID 1 on the Ultra 2 ?

If you are using the ultra as a backup device, then that is a good approach. If the ultra is your primary storage then depending on RAID-1 alone is a risky strategy. There are many people here who used that approach and lost their data. The NAS itself can fail, and since the drives are presented with the same loads, multiple drive failures do occur. And of course there is the possibility of disaster (flood, lightening, theft, etc).

Anyway, you cannot use NTFS or FAT32 as a native volume format on the NAS.

As far as tools, go, there is an ext2fsd freeware package you can try. There are also some linux boot CDs that you could also try.

Oh okay.
So if I use Linux (from a boot CD or from a full Ubuntu intsallation for example), I can access to the data on one of the former RAID 1 HDD, and then move all the files to another HDD formatted with NTFS, and then recover data from Windows. Is that right (as you can gess, I am not a Linux expert... Windows neither :D )

Limerick wrote:
Oh okay. So if I use Linux (from a boot CD or from a full Ubuntu intsallation for example), I can access to the data on one of the former RAID 1 HDD, and then move all the files to another HDD formatted with NTFS, and then recover data from Windows. Is that right (as you can gess, I am not a Linux expert... Windows neither :D )

Yes. Also perhaps with Windows using the extfsd package.

If this is the main way that you want to recover your data, then you should test-drive it, so you know it will work when you need it.

In fact, I am looking for the easiest and fastest way to recover data from a RAID 1 to windows.

Anyway, as far as I can see, it is much more easy to recover them from a RAID 1 then from a RAID 5 after the NAS has crashed (not the HDD's, but the NAS itself).

RAID-1 is simpler for recovery, since the drives are mirrored. RAID-5 is more efficient (more available space on the volume for the same disks).

Though RAiD-0 and RAID-1 are the only choices you have with an ultra-2. Your other main option would be to have two RAID-0 volumes (one for each drive), and to sync them up with FrontView backup. One could also use RAID-0 to create a single aggregated volume (spanning both drives), but this has a huge drawback. If either drive were to fail, you would lose all your data.

Yes, yes, thanks Stephen. I know the risk with RAID 0.
As I don't need speedy writing but just backup, I only want a simple way to "double" (triple in fact because one HDD is mirrored...) the data.

In fact, I had a hardware issue with a Thecus on RAID 5 and did something wrong with my directories on my computer. Then I lost almost everything because data was no more accessible until I rebuild the RAID 5 on that NAS.
Now I managed to recover them after changing the power unit and bought a simple Ultra 2 for miroring.

So now, I just want to be able to have my data back easily in case the samething happens (hardware issue + wrong fingers :D ).

Sure.

I was just pointing out RAID-5 is hypothetical with the ultra-2, since it requires at least 3 drives (responding to the reference to RAID-5 a couple of posts up).