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I have a new RN104 with two 3TB disks. I find the easily expandable nature of X-RAID appealing, but have concerns about being able to recover data if the NAS itself breaks. I have a few questions along those lines:
Can an X-RAID volume be accessed from another system (not ReadyNAS) if my RN breaks, assuming N-1 disks are okay?
Can a Flex-RAID volume be accessed from another system?
The 6.2 manual claims that I can switch between X-RAID and Flex-RAID without data loss -- sounds good, but can anybody confirm that this works in practice?
It seems to me that if X-RAID can't be accessed elsewhere, but Flex-RAID can, my best strategy would be to keep the volume as Flex-RAID until I want to add a drive, then convert to X-RAID, expand the volume without data loss, and convert back to Flex-RAID afterwards. Is there a flaw in this plan? It would seem to offer the best of both worlds: easy expansion, and more recovery options later.
Re: X-RAID and Flex-RAID: switching, access later?
With OS-6 switching between single-volume flexraid and xraid is non destructive.
The main benefit of the XRAID software is that it automatically manages volume expansion. But it does that using normal linux software RAID tools. The on-disk structures are all standard RAID, and the RAID volumes can be mounted on other linux systems (for instance Ubuntu).
So the net here is that as far as data recovery goes, there is no real difference between the two.
Your best strategy is to put a solid backup strategy in place, so you don't need data recovery in the first place. Data recovery is very expensive, and in many cases incomplete.
Re: X-RAID and Flex-RAID: switching, access later?
With OS-6 switching between single-volume flexraid and xraid is non destructive.
The main benefit of the XRAID software is that it automatically manages volume expansion. But it does that using normal linux software RAID tools. The on-disk structures are all standard RAID, and the RAID volumes can be mounted on other linux systems (for instance Ubuntu).
So the net here is that as far as data recovery goes, there is no real difference between the two.
Your best strategy is to put a solid backup strategy in place, so you don't need data recovery in the first place. Data recovery is very expensive, and in many cases incomplete.
