So having a total melt down, had my nas for years, it was set up for me and i was shown what i beeded to know on how to store a film and play it back over plex. So i took a hard drive out of it left 3 in, i wasnt awear that it was only using the 2 hard drives not the 3, so bought another 2TB at a rediculs cheap price, compared to when i first bought the harddrive, anyway... So its shown its balancing out ? been at it 2 days and were on 60%, its took a day or two to figure i needed to open raidar - now from here im trying to get into the nasbox, 192.168 etc etc., So its telling me wrong password, and when recovery page opens i stick details in and i get no go sign every time. i just pluged another tinternet lead into the back, and that gave me a new ip to try, but thats doing same thing, So it looks like im having to do a reset, but i am worried about losing my data on the hard drives, ive been caught outonce before, formatted 2TB lost thousands of films photos .. so i worried im gonna lose this lot. Im trying to build a 10g home systems using 6A cables.. That wont be it will it ??
Model: RN10400|ReadyNAS 100 Series 4- Bay (Diskless)
So i took a hard drive out of it left 3 in, i wasnt awear that it was only using the 2 hard drives not the 3, so bought another 2TB at a rediculs cheap price, compared to when i first bought the harddrive, anyway...
Normally it uses all the hard drives, so removing one was likely a bad idea. Why did you think it wasn't using the remaining drive?
so bought another 2TB at a rediculs cheap price, compared to when i first bought the harddrive, anyway... So its shown its balancing out ? been at it 2 days and were on 60%,
I'm a bit confused on what you are saying here. Did you add the new hard drive to the ReadyNAS?
If so, the normal message would have said it was resyncing, not rebalancing. Are you sure is said "balancing"?
Are you logging in as "admin"? Are you saying you don't remember the admin password? If you never set it, then try "password", which is the default.
You can do an OS reinstall, which is fairly safe.
But if you still have access to the shares via file explorer, you should begin by backing up the data on your NAS. RAID isn't enough to keep it safe - the best way to do that is to have a backup on a different device. So get a suitable USB hard drive (perhaps a WD Easystore), and make a copy of the data. It's fastest to connect the USB drive to your PC, and connect the PC to the router with ethernet. Then perhaps use a utility like FreeFileSync or Teracopy to copy the data.
The reinstall will reset the admin password back to password. It will also turn off volume quota. If that was set, you turn it back on by clicking on the settings wheel of the volume on the volume tab of the web ui. If you don't know if it was set or not, just leave it off.
DO NOT do the OS re-install untill the re-sync is complete. Likewise, do not cycle power.
I believe your understanding of what was, and still is, going on is flawed. Here is what I think the case is: Your NAS was using all 3 drives in RAID. In RAID5 (your likely configuration), the usable space you get from three drives is that of two. The remaining space is used for parity, which helps protect you from data loss in the event of a drive failure but is mainly to assure continued access, not backup. So, when you removed a drive (effectively "failing" it if you removed it for something other than a true failure), the NAS could continue to operate in a degraded mode, but you lost your RAID protection. Ever since you did that, your data has been at risk of loss in the event of a drive failure. Now that you have put in another drive, it is re-syncing. That will not add space, it will re-establish the RAID protection. If you need more space, you're going to need to use the 4th drive slot for yet another 2TB drive.
While RAID provides some protection, there are many events that can still cause loss of the volume. Or the chassis itself can fail. This forum is full of messages from people who misunderstood RAID and lost valuable data. Only a true backup, on an independent device such as USB, provides proper insurance from loss. And even then, having it located in the same place makes both subject to things like fire and theft. Irreplaceable family photos and such are files you may want to consider for cloud backup. Of course if your NAS already is just backup (that is, all data also still exists in it's original location), then backup is mostly for convenience since you can, if needed, re-gather the data.
Re-sync has to read every sector on your existing drives, calculate the data for the third, and write it. That does take a long time, especially on a low-powered NAS like a 104.
A NAS is not a "set it and forget it" box. You can set up email alerts for events like drive loss and space running out, but you really should be logging in occassionally and checking to see all is well.
