So I bought a vacation home, and want to just duplicate my NAS storage so I have a working setup in both homes. I DO NOT want to have to run sharing software across the net to listen and watch my library of files. It's simple; this stuff is air gaped so there's no way for anyone to screw around with my data.
So, can I just take one of the drives out of my current readynas duo v2, replace with a blank so THAT readynas will mirror itself, and put the drive I removed into another v2? And does it matter if the new readynas has different firmware? I worry that the new NAS won't recognize the drive as working and will format it. So the question might be, do I install the drive that's full of data while the readynas has the power off, or on?
Model: ReadyNAS RND2000v2|ReadyNAS Duo v2 Chassis only
Re: Readynas Duo v2 Clone readynas for vacation home?
Simple, it's just one more thing to keep track of, and if I lost it, I would wind up there with limited entertainment. Also, I'm not the only one who goes to that vacation home. This way everyone has access to my entire video and audio library while they are there. A plus, is that I will also have another back up of my data. I'm currently moving video stuff off of my old readynas duo v1's because of the 2TB cap with those. I'm running pairs of 8TB WD drives in the v2's. The v1's are relegated to being mostly music servers now.
Re: Readynas Duo v2 Clone readynas for vacation home?
I sometimes stay for weeks at a time; so do my friends and relatives. I started collecting entertainment files when I learned that video companies occasionally take stuff off of the market. Same with streaming like Netflix and Amazon prime; what's available this month, may be gone when I get the urge to watch it. So I started my own library.
So, can I just take one of the drives out of my current readynas duo v2, replace with a blank so THAT readynas will mirror itself, and put the drive I removed into another v2? And does it matter if the new readynas has different firmware? I worry that the new NAS won't recognize the drive as working and will format it. So the question might be, do I install the drive that's full of data while the readynas has the power off, or on?
Of course you could transport the whole NAS - the duo isn't that big.
The first step here would be to buy a duplicate duo v2 - they've been end of life for a while. Make sure you get the correct model - there's a lot of confusion here. People selling used NAS often use images they find on the internet, so you might want to confirm the model via email before purchase. The v2 runs 5.3.x firmware and says v2 on the front panel. (Edit: based on one of your earlier responses you might also have a second v2).
You do want the firmware to match - but since the NAS is end of life, I don't think will be a problem. Just install the current firmware onto the vacation NAS when you get it, and you should be ok.
General considerations:
The disk SATA connectors aren't normally subjected to a lot of insertions, and there is some risk that the connectors will fail if you do this a lot.
Resync takes some time (often 24 hours with a 4 TB drive).
The volume will fail (and you will lose data) if a disk fails during the resync
Disks can of course fail during transport.
With these in mind:
You could bring both disks with you, and install them both in the duplicate NAS. That avoids any need to resync, but there is risk of damage during transport.
You could bring one disk, and resync at the vacation home. You'd need to boot the vacation NAS with only the home disk, and then hot-insert the one already at the vacation home. That will sync the vacation disk to the home disk. Transport risk overall is reduced, but now you have resync risk.
You could just run with one disk in the vacation home, and resync when you get back. Then you'd just insert the travel disk back into the home NAS (when running) and it will resync to the home disk. You cut the resyncs in half, and only risk transport with one disk. Note any content you added while away would be lost.
Option 3 sounds the best to me, especially if you aren't the one handling the disks at the vacation home.
ReadyDR and ReadyCloud aren't available on the duo v2, they would only matter if you had the current OS-6 ReadyNAS. ReadyDR wouldn't work for your use case anyway.
Re: Readynas Duo v2 Clone readynas for vacation home?
"Where is this holiday"
My vacation home is out in the south west. I live in NJ next to NYC. I fly out and back. It's a four day drive, ten or twelve hours a day on the road. OR.....one morning on a plane, and I'm there. Take a cab to the house, where I have cars. Shop. done. Go swimming. Relax. I'm the only one in the neighborhood with anything resembling a dedicated home theater room. I like movies, and any night that we're not going out, we have a movie night. Said home theater room is simply the main room, with furniture moved around, and extra lounge chairs brought in from the patio. Nearly all of my furniture is on casters, so it's easy to reconfigure the whole room in minutes, even if you're a 100 pound person. In fact, I think that the kids could even do it. Locking 3" casters on a base makes everything easy to move and then make sure it stays where you put it. There's a 12 foot diagonal pull down screen mounted to the ceiling at one end of the room. And yes, home is set up in a similar fashion. The projector is a Sony VPL VW60 mounted on the ceiling towards the other end of the room. Old, but still works just fine in 1080p. And yes, I have the same setup at both houses, having picked up a second projector used off of fleabay. That way I save on bulbs, as pretty much everyone uses the projector as a TV.
"Of course you could transport the whole NAS - the duo isn't that big."
The whole point of this is to not have to carry 100's of pounds of stuff with me when I travel back and forth, also worrying about damage or loss during the trips. I keep spare clothing there, cars are in the garage, each bedroom has a pc & widescreen, cable, there's the home theater room already simple setup so anyone can operate it in a very short time (or I can easily walk them through it over the phone), etc.. When I go, all I do is, I pack a small carry on, and go. No vacation packing. No concern about forgetting anything. One stop at the grocery and liqour store, and I'm good. Everything is already at the house, no nonsense with the internet, no chance of losing my data from some other company's cloud, not to mention the continual cost for that. This way I know I have a reliable setup where I'm going, and everyone else who goes there, has access to it, too. And that is probably the most important thing; anyone who goes there, has access to all of it.
I already own 2 v2's running at home. I already purchased two more, and four 8TB discs. I'm ready to go. I came here to ask opinions rather than have to go through the whole shebang and find out it doesn't work. I share what I have learned, and hope that others will do the same, too.
[quote]With these in mind "You could bring both disks " etc.[/quote]
I don't want to be toting discs back and forth. At most, I will access my home NAS data from my vacation home MYSELF, to transfer any new files to the vacation home NAS. Most of the people I know are computer neophytes who would not have the vaguest idea of what to do if something doesn't work; these are also people who are susceptible to clicking on the wrong thing and getting themselves a virus. Hence, keeping THIS system air gapped from the internet at the vacation home.
Why don't I just buy a larger NAS or set up a computer with a raid drive? Because, simplicity. One device dies, the others likely still will work. I just replace one thing as needed, and yes, I keep spare duo v2's and discs that I've already checked to make sure it works, in my closet, ready to go. I haven't had any device or disc failures in decades, but I'm prepared for if it happens. I have back ups available should it occur (yes, I too learned to back up my stuff the hard way, by 'upgrading' to DOS 6 and losing access to my data for three absolutely terrible days which also taught me to NEVER trust Microsoft's BS). Yes, I can access my home network remotely. No, no one else close to me knows how to do that. I'm not an expert in all things computer. But I have learned what I have needed to know. Now I'm trying to learn about this. As mentioned, I do not know if the firmware of the NAS has anything to do with what's on the discs. For example, I can move a drive from a Win 7 computer to a Win 10 computer or vice versa, both with different motherboards, and each can read the disc, though they might not be happy about doing it, screaming at me NO NO YOU CAN'T USE THIS OS ON THIS OTHER COMPUTER IT VIOLATES TOS YOU BAD BAD BOY!, but a simple call to M$ corrects that situation, even as the computer works while I wait. So I wanted to know if the readynas duo's were equally as adept at accepting drives from another duo which is essentially identical to it, maybe other than the firmware.
I won't be removing the drives once they're set, so, no resynching will be necessary. I will transport ONE of the mirrored drives and once the NAS is happy with it, install a blank so it can mirror that one.
I'm using the 8TB WD drives, which appear to be Hitachi helium drives. Someone else wrote to me that he's in the process of trying 10TB drives using the same procedure that I wrote up, here, about how I went about it. But before tryng even larger drives, I will wait to see how others make out doing it. A pair of 8TB duo v2's will have enough room for growth for a few years. At some point, I will have to move to a newer storage system. But that, hopefully, is years away.
Re: Readynas Duo v2 Clone readynas for vacation home?
I realize the early responses got off on the wrong foot, and I tried to refocus it. Your use case sounds perfectly reasonable to me, and I was simply responding to your original question as I understood it.
At most, I will access my home NAS data from my vacation home MYSELF, to transfer any new files to the vacation home NAS.
When you talked about "air gapped" in your first post, I was thinking that you were ruling this out - air-gapping both NAS. Your last post sounds like you are only "air gapping" the vacation NAS when you are not there. Is that the case?
You can certainly transfer new files to the vacation home NAS over the internet. If you go that route, you don't need to match the model or the firmware, since you'd be transferring with a backup job of some sort. So you could use an Duo+ v2, an OS-6 ReadyNAS, or even a QNAP or Synology.
Security is one aspect though. The best protocol for this is rsync over ssh, but that isn't available on the NV+ v2. The available protocols aren't encrypted, and I don't recommend using them for over-the-internet transfers.
If you are looking for a secure solution here, then Syncthing might be one option you could look into, though I don't know enough about it to give advice. There is an inexpensive add-on that would let you use it on the Duo+ v2.
Another option is to use VPN routers that would let you put both locations on the same network. If you plan to use cameras or other devices for security in either location, that might also simplify remote monitoring. You could still block internet access in either (or both) NAS, so they would only communicate over the encrypted VPN tunnel.
As mentioned, I do not know if the firmware of the NAS has anything to do with what's on the discs.
I tried to explain that, but perhaps not well enough. The NAS installs the operating system and the ReadyNAS application software onto a small OS partition on the disks. The system boots from the disks. There is also an OS image in the NAS flash, and your NAS will automatically upgrade/downgrade the software on the disk to match the flash. So if the flash held 5.3.11, and you inserted 5.3.9 disks and powered up, then the boot loader would upgrade the disks to 5.3.11 as part of the boot process. If the flash held 5.3.9, and you inserted 5.3.11 disks it would downgrade the disks. To avoid any surprises you can do a factory install on the vacation NAS (with a blank disk), and then install the firmware you are running on your home NAS.
I am guessing that your original question was focussed on getting the data onto your vacation NAS in the first place? But not on keeping the vacation NAS up to date? If you are using RAID-1, then it is possible to load the data that way. But I think you are better off just setting the vacation NAS up in the normal way, and migrating the data over a wired gigabit connection using the backup jobs in your NAS.
You could alternatively just clone the disk(s) in the home NAS, and put the clone(s) into the vacation NAS. Use a cloning program that does sector-by-sector copying. All settings will be migrated of course, so you'd probably want to shut down the home NAS when you first boot the vacation one. Then change the hostname (and if you are using static IP addresses, change the network configuration).
Re: Readynas Duo v2 Clone readynas for vacation home?
And there we go! All my questions answered. Thank you!
A few answers: I air gapped the network with the NAS on it because I'm lazy. I don't want to have to learn tons of new computer information just in case someone else screws up. While I do want to know enough to fix my systems when they go wrong, spending a lot of time indoors playing with computers isn't my idea of fun anymore, there are simply a lot of other things I'd rather be doing. I had gotten the computer bug first, back when that DOS 6 debacle with doublespace happened; I spent three days and nights over a weekend having to figure out where my data went, and how to get it back. At that point, there was no help available, as I did not yet have any online BBS connections to ask for help. I was on my own. Exhausting, but satisfied (after a day of sleep). From there, it became more fun to just get finicky games to run, than actually playing the game itself. Then the computer building bug got me too, as back then, many parts came with zero instructions, so getting everything to work together with all the interrupts and addresses that had to be configured was like black magic. It used to be fun. Now it's just tedious. While it would be easier, I guess, to just get everything off of itunes, netflix, and other streaming services, they do remove content from their offerings, and what I'm looking for just might be unavailable when I want it. A simple example, is Disney movies. They periodically removed selected films for sale completely, in order to stimulate sales when they WERE available. Other studios started doing the same; when I went looking for the Raiders of the Lost Ark series, it was unavailable. The studios were pretty much annoying the world, just because they can. So I save everything I might want for later viewing, on my own storage. Converting them to mkv's I can store them both at home AND at my vacation home, rather than keep thousands of DVD/Blueray discs in both places. My eyes cannot tell the difference between a ripped compressed file and the original disc, and I don't think many other people can tell, either, unless you've already informed them that they're watching a compressed copy of the original. So, I don't tell them. I just say that the HD version is available on the NAS. They don't know that it's not the full Bluray file, so they don't care (and yes, I know snooty people who won't watch 'a degraded' movie because it's not 'all the original information' byte for byte. These are my relatives, and I can't just simply eject them from my life because they are annoying snobs).
And so, the collection in two homes. I have what I want, they can enjoy it too while they bask in the luxury of ignorance. And my data is safe. Mission accomplished.
My eyes cannot tell the difference between a ripped compressed file and the original disc, and I don't think many other people can tell, either
I totally agree here. The goal is after all is to enjoy the movie, without the quality distracting you from doing that. Personally I use H.264: 1 mb/s for SD, about 5 mb/s for 720p and 8 mb/s for 1080p. Though Netflix uses less, and most people find that is good enough.
Also, a surprising amount of space on a bluray goes to audio. Just getting rid of tracks you don't need can often cut the total space in half.
Re: Readynas Duo v2 Clone readynas for vacation home?
The quality of the video is far surpassed in importance, by the storyline. I remember watching movies on a black and white 9" Sony TV, completely captivated by the movie (TV show, or whatever) I was watching. I maintain that if you find yourself busy seeing if you can count the leaves of grass or the hairs on an actor's head, or you are looking at how big pixels are, then the movie you're watching, sucks (or whatever; though maybe if you watch golf or baseball, you have plenty of time to count grass, hairs or pixels, because those sports are so damn slow!). That said, I'm using H 265 now.
I maintain that if you find yourself busy seeing if you can count the leaves of grass or the hairs on an actor's head, or you are looking at how big pixels are, then the movie you're watching sucks
Totally agree. Though of course if the quality gets too low, it will distract.
