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Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

delanod
Aspirant

ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

I have a ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus running X-RAID2. I started off with 4 1T drives, which yielded me around 3T (I'm rounding for this discussion). 3T NAS drives are coming down in price, and I picked up two WD Red Label 3T drives last week. Over the weekend I hot installed the two new drives and let the NAS do it's thing. I think it is all finished up and I now have 6.5T available. Does this sound correct?

Now, I'm considering upgrading the 1T drives, probably one at a time, as the price allows. But, since this involves removing a drive, I want to make sure of what I'm doing first.

The way I understand it, I should be able to remove one of the 1T drives without losing any data. Is this correct? Then I can insert a new 3T drive and it will rebuild the 1T data onto that drive, then expand to give me more data (1T or so more?). Once this is finished and running, I can then remove the 2nd 1T drive and replace it with a 3T drive, and repeat until all the 1T drives are replaced.

Is this correct? And I don't lose any data? Once I have all the bays upgraded to 3T drives, what usable capacity will I have? 12T?

David
Message 1 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Your process is correct. Normally there is no data loss, but if there is a disk error during the expansion process you will lose data. It is always best to have an up-to-date backup before messing with disks.

There is an expansion limit of 8 TiB over your starting volume size (which was 3 TB). 5x3TB would bring you to 10.9 TiB - which is a a couple hundred GB over the threshold. So the last disk expansion would fail. One way to solve that problem is to do a reset now. This will wipe your data, and you would need to reload add-ons and restore the configuration. The benefit of doing it now is that you have less data to restore. After the reset, you could go up to 6x3TB with no problem.
Message 2 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Thanks for the answer, and sorry for the slow response. I was expecting to get an email when there was an update, but didn't receive one.

I've read of the 8T limit over the starting size. Why is this? What is TiB?

I could upgrade a couple of disks, though, with no problem?

I do have a couple of mostly empty 3T USB drives hanging off the ReadyNAS. Backing it up is not an issue.
Message 3 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

TiB = 1024*1024*1024*1024 bytes. Its the units the NAS displays, and the ones Microsoft uses.
Message 4 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Ok, that's why I was just working with rounded numbers.

How do I calculate how much the NAS will give? T * 3/4, then apply TiB?
Message 5 of 28
fastfwd
Virtuoso

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

delanod wrote:
How do I calculate how much the NAS will give? T * 3/4, then apply TiB?

Sum the sizes of all drives EXCEPT the largest. You started with 4 x 1TB, so the progression you're describing would go like this:

4 x 1TB = 3TB usable (This was presumably the initial size of the array -- that is, it wasn't expanded to this size from an even smaller size)
4 x 1TB + 2 x 3TB = 7TB usable (Initial size + 4TB expansion)
3 x 1TB + 3 x 3TB = 9TB usable (Initial size + 6TB expansion)
2 x 1TB + 4 x 3TB = 11TB usable (Initial size + 8TB expansion)

At 11TB, you will have expanded by the maximum 8TB from your initial 3TB size. No further expansion will be possible.

If you perform the factory reset that StephenB described, the progression will look like this:

4 x 1TB = 3TB usable (This was presumably the initial size of the array -- that is, it wasn't expanded to this size from an even smaller size)
4 x 1TB + 2 x 3TB = 7TB usable (Initial size + 4TB expansion)
FACTORY RESET -- At this point, the current 7TB size becomes the new "initial size"
3 x 1TB + 3 x 3TB = 9TB usable (Initial size + 2TB expansion)
2 x 1TB + 4 x 3TB = 11TB usable (Initial size + 4TB expansion)
1 x 1TB + 5 x 3TB = 13TB usable (Initial size + 6TB expansion)
6 x 3TB = 15TB usable (Initial size + 8TB expansion)
Message 6 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

You can actually get slightly more than 11 TB, since the actual limit is 8 TiB, not 8 TB. Occasionally that makes a difference, however it doesn't in the examples fastfwd gives.

Also, since the NAS is reporting TiB, the 11 TB volume would be reported as 10. 11/(1.024*1.024*1.024*1.024) = ~10
Message 7 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

I thinking I'm understanding the math now.

Would there be any advantage in swapping in two 3T drives, giving me 11T, which would be the max from my starting point, THEN doing the reset? If I understand correctly, I'd still have 11T at that point, but could then expand to theoretically 19T. I could replace the last two drives with 4T are larger drives (what is the limit?) down the road, as prices drop?

The backup would be the same, as I'm not suddenly adding more data to the NAS. I don't need the extra space right away, but it would be nice to take advantage of the full potential of this NAS.
Message 8 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

There are two limits - 16 TiB ceiling on expansion, and the growth limit of 8 TiB.

Resetting at 7 TB lets you grow to 6x3TB. If you want to expand to the full 16 TB, then you can do the reset at any point >= 8 TB.
Message 9 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

I think you just sold me on waiting to reset. While I may never hit the 16T ceiling, it would be nice to only have to reset once, and while the NAS is not nearly full (I'm around 1T at the moment). I think my plan will be to upgrade two more drives, then do a reset. So now, I have to keep my eye out for drives on sale!

Thanks for all the help!!!
Message 10 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

I agree there is no rush.

The main benefit of resetting sooner is that you'd have less data to restore from backup.
Message 11 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

The last two drives arrived today, thanks to them being on sale last weekend. Right new I stand at 2 x 1T and 4 x 3T. I'm going to need to do a reset during the next add, so here is my question. Rather than hot swapping these last two drives, can I do a backup now, power down, swap the last two drives, bring the NAS back up and do a reset? Or is it going to go bonkers with the two new drives?
Message 12 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Your process should be fine (powering down, inserting the drives, then doing the reset from the front panel,boot menu)

Remember the order for rebuilding... (a) reinstall add-ons, (b) reapply config (c) restore data. If you restore the config first, you can get the system very confused on what addons are installed.
Message 13 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Please point me to something on rebuilding, then. I didn't know about steps a and b, especially b.
Message 14 of 28
StephenB
Guru

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

A factory reset brings the NAS back to its factory settings. So you lose your full configuration - add-ins, settings, and shares.

To make it easier to get everything back, there are a couple of preliminary steps.

(1) make a full data backup of course. I'd do this to a file format I can read on my PC (e.g. NTFS).
(2) make a list of the add-ons you have installed. If there are some you no longer want, uninstall them now.
(3) Save your configuration files in system->config backup. I don't recommend "everything". Instead check everything except data volumes. This will save a zip file to your PC.

Then after the reset, log into the NAS (using the default password, which is netgear1 in your case)
(a) Re-install the add-ons first.
(b) then restore the configuration zip file (again via system->config backup, clicking the "restore" tab)
(c) then copy back your data.
Message 15 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Ok, I kicked off the backup to an attached USB drive before I left for work. I didn't see anything that would determine the format, but I think the drive is NTFS, or at least FAT32 (it's a 3T drive). I found the menu to back up the config.

How do I restore the data? You say, "copy", but where do I do that from?
Message 16 of 28
fastfwd
Virtuoso

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

delanod wrote:
I think the drive is NTFS, or at least FAT32

Make sure it's not FAT32. That filesystem doesn't support file permissions and ownership, is case-insensitive and not guaranteed to be case-preserving, can't handle files larger than 4GB, might have trouble with non-ASCII characters, doesn't support symlinks or hardlinks, etc. Some of those problems might not be an issue for you, but why take a chance?

NTFS is better (and probably good enough for your purposes), but for maximum compatibility I'd recommend using ext4; you can format the USB drive from within Frontview. If you're worried that you might need to access the drive from Windows for some reason, third-party software is available to do that (Linux Reader is one program that's often recommended).
Message 17 of 28
fastfwd
Virtuoso

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

delanod wrote:
How do I restore the data? You say, "copy", but where do I do that from?

The usual way is to create a new backup job just like the original one, but with the source and destination reversed.

Unfortunately, Frontview's source and destination options aren't exactly the same: "Volume" and "Share" are available as sources, but only "Share" is available as a destination. So if your original backup was of an entire volume (containing multiple shares), you'll have to create multiple restore jobs, one for each share within the volume.
Message 18 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

So.....should I go back and create a job for each share? It's not too late to do that.
Message 19 of 28
fastfwd
Virtuoso

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

If it's no trouble, that would make it easier to restore the data (and easier to ensure that you restore everything that you backed up). Restarting the backup will also give you a chance to ensure that the USB drive is formatted using the filesystem you desire.
Message 20 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

The USB drives are both formatted to EXT4. I tried to backup each share, but I'm getting errors. And, I see a problem. When I backup share X to USB2, the backup is attempting to put the contents of X into the root of USB2. I was expecting the backup to create a drive/folder named X and dump the contents there. I tried creating a directory manually, but I don't see a way to select it for a destination. What am I doing wrong?
Message 21 of 28
fastfwd
Virtuoso

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Create the directory on the USB drive first (easiest way is to map the USB drive to a drive letter so you can access it from Windows).

In the "Backup source" section, set the source to share: share_to_backup. Leave everything else empty.

In the "Backup destination" section, set the destination to Remote: Rsync server (do not set it to share:name_of_your_usb_drive). Set Host to the name of your NAS. Set Path to name_of_your_usb_drive/desired_destination_directory .
Message 22 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

Thanks! I was setting destination to share:name_of_your_usb_drive. I tried to select a directory, but it wouldn't let me. I'll edit the jobs when I get home.

Is there a string length limit for the file names? For my backups, the paths get quite long.
Message 23 of 28
fastfwd
Virtuoso

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

delanod wrote:
Is there a string length limit for the file names? For my backups, the paths get quite long.

Ext4 has no inherent pathname limit. Linux's limit is 4096 (or maybe 4095) bytes.
Message 24 of 28
delanod
Aspirant

Re: ReadyNAS Ultra 6 Plus Upgrade Plans

I think I'm finished with the reset. It didn't go entirely as planned, but it looks like it's working.

I added the new drives from 6 down to 1. 6 & 5 worked beautifully, because they went into previously unused slots. 4-2 took longer, but did work. I did notice one issue. I shut down the NAS, swapped the drive, booted back up. The NAS detected the new drive, actually detected the old drive as failed, and set about to rebuild it. But, nothing really had happened. I rebooted, and it wasn't until this second boot that the rebuilding process kicked in.

Disk 1 somehow hung everything. The front drive display was stuck on the same percentage for over 24 hours. Note that this last disk kicked me over the 8T limit. The fans were running at high speed. The web service was not responding. I finally hit the power button. It came back up okay, but all the shares were gone. Not a real issue, since I was going to reset anyway, but a bit unsettling that there might be an issue if you lose disk one.

The reset went fairly smoothly, after I realized that the IP address had changed. I found it with RAIDar and updated the network parameters, changed the password, etc. I then installed the plugins - I think I got them all - and restored the configuration. I booted again and all the shares returned, though empty. I'm restoring the shares from backup, with one left to go. At least this part went according to plan. I do see that not everything was restored from the config, so I'll check all the menus (maintenance was not there).

My NAS now reports 13T. I have 6 x 3T, so I think that's correct, rounded. It should be a little more than 13T. So, I've added 10T to the available memory with this upgrade.

One more question.....is it worth adding more memory? I haven't cracked it open to see how difficult that would be, but I've built my own computers for 25 years, so I think I can handle it.

Thanks to everyone who helped along the way (before I forget that)!

David
Message 25 of 28
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