This topic has been marked solved and closed to new posts due to inactivity. We hope you'll join the conversation by posting to an open topic or starting a new one.
For my ReadyNAS NV+ I have a set of 4 drives mounted which are full but rarely accessed - I'll call these Set A. I have another set of 4 drives which are empty - I'll call these Set B.
My question is this: if I remove Set A and install Set B, if I later re-install Set A will I still be able to read the data that's on them or not?
Generally we discourage this - one aspect is that the SATA connectors on the drives aren't designed for a lot of insertions, and they can damaged if you do this too often. And of course you need to be careful when handling/storing the drives, and remounting them in the drive trays. It isn't the safest strategy for archiving data.
But you can power down and swap the drive sets. The OS is installed on the drives along with the configuration files. It's best to label the drives by slot (preserving the slot order), and it's important that the NAS be powered down when you swap. It will automatically format drives that you insert when the NAS is running.
Note that in your NAS, if the firmware version is the flash differs from what's on the drives, then the firmware in the flash will automatically be applied to the drives when the system boots. That can either upgrade or downgrade the firmware. So it would be more difficult to manage this swapping if the firmware on the two sets of disks doesn't match.
Generally we discourage this - one aspect is that the SATA connectors on the drives aren't designed for a lot of insertions, and they can damaged if you do this too often. And of course you need to be careful when handling/storing the drives, and remounting them in the drive trays. It isn't the safest strategy for archiving data.
But you can power down and swap the drive sets. The OS is installed on the drives along with the configuration files. It's best to label the drives by slot (preserving the slot order), and it's important that the NAS be powered down when you swap. It will automatically format drives that you insert when the NAS is running.
Note that in your NAS, if the firmware version is the flash differs from what's on the drives, then the firmware in the flash will automatically be applied to the drives when the system boots. That can either upgrade or downgrade the firmware. So it would be more difficult to manage this swapping if the firmware on the two sets of disks doesn't match.
