Upgrading ReadyNAS RN3130

If all the drives currently in the NAS are of the same vintage as the one that has failed, then a second failure during re-sync, which would render your volume dead, is certainly a possibility.  And swapping drives incrementally is going to triple the extra stress of a sync.  So going with a complete new volume is that way I'd go.  You can backup the configuration file, too.  Just make sure you re-install any apps before you restore the configuration.  But even if you are going with all new drives, you don't need to start with all four.  Starting with just what you need spaces out the purchases, which affects your investment, but perhaps more importantly insures all the drives aren't from the same lot and starts putting life on them incrementally, so near-term failure of a second drive is less likely down the road.  One advantage of XRAID is that there is no need to fill a unit to start to insure you get full use from the drives once it is full.

Whether or not you really need yet another backup of backup data is something you can decide.  But having had to inform folks here that their precious family photos are lost because they trusted that RAID (and, more importantly, the hardware on which it resides) is bulletproof, I can say that any data that only exists on the NAS is vulnerable.  Over the years since my first purchase of an Infrant NV, I've only lost a volume once, though I came close when another went read-only.  But that I did have a backup of what was important to me saved my bacon.

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StephenB wrote:

 

Those drives should be fine - enterprise class.  Though Netgear is very slow to add drives to their compatibility list, as you found, this particular drive is on it.  The WD Red Pro, the Seagate Exos or Ironwolf Pro would also work.

 

FWIW, if you do want to do all four now, it would be faster to back up the NAS, and then do a fresh install with all the new disks in place.  Then reconfigure the NAS and restore the data from the backup. 

 

The reason it's faster is the repeated resyncs needed with one-at-at-time.  Every resync requires either reading or writing every sector in the volume.  So the first resync requires 16 TB of access (the extra space on the 14 TB drive isn't processed), the second requires 36 TB, the third requires 46, the the last requires 56 TB.  All four add up to 154 TB of disk I/O.  Building the volume once with a fresh install only requires 56 TB

 

While I understand that motivation, it likely will be less expensive to upgrade it over time.  Disk capacities are expected to increase quite a bit over the next few years as HAMR/MAMR technology is introduced.  So prices on the 14 TB drives will drop.

 

Just replacing two disks now will increase your space by 10 TB.

 

Also, replacing all four sequentially will almost certainly take more than a week, and the NAS performance will be slower than usual during the resyncs.  Of course doing all-at-once would result in no access to the data until it is restored from backup.

 

The sequential process is as simple as hot-swapping each drive and waiting for the resync to finish, and then hot swapping the next.

 

The all-at-once approach is more complicated (requiring reconfiguring the NAS), but as I noted it is faster overall.

 

Data safety is a consideration, particularly since the volume is already degraded.

 

RAID isn't enough to keep your data safe, so hopefully you do have a backup plan in place for the NAS already. If not, you should take care of that as part of the upgrade.  Your backup plan needs to expand as your storage needs increase.  So maybe consider upgrading just a pair of disks now, and adding two more USB backup drives (as an alternative to upgrading everything now).

 

Either way, the data is particularly vulnerable now, and there is no RAID protection when the volume is being resynced.  If a second one of the original disks fails during the repeated resyncs, you will lose the data. This isn't as unlikely as you might think - the original disks were likely all installed together, and experienced near identical loads and environmental conditions. And all that disk I/O during the resync does stress the disks. So whether you do the upgrade sequentially or all-at-once, you really should back up the data first.

 

One benefit of the "all at once" approach is that you actually have two copies of the data to fall back on.  You'd have the standalone backup that you make, and the original three working disks that you removed.  If something goes wrong with the standalone backup, you can power down, insert the original three disks (other slot empty), and power back up.  That will give you another shot at getting back the data.

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So ideally I would get an external and backup everything on the NAS first. Then replace all the drives in the NAS and do a full resync and reload in one shot? At that time I could resync from the external onto the updated NAS array and would gain the benefit of the external backup that I created before swapping NAS drives.

Will the 3130 recognize that much disk space? The price of the drive on Amazon right now is $400 which didn't seem horrible considering I would end up above 30tb usable storage for under $1600, excluding the cost of an external to move everything to first. The tech sheet only lists "total solution capacity" as 24tb so would I even benefit from buying considerably larger drives?

I will see some increase if I upgrade at least two of the drives now? That was another concern after talking to some more tech oriented friends. They were worried that no matter what I would have to do a full resync to get the maximum space as they did not know if the RAID configuration would pick up the full size of the new drives.

I am not against the idea of an external to move to temporarily and then just swapping all of the drives. Ideally I would go that route giving me (hopefully) more than enough storage for a very long time.

Thank you very much for the help!