Expanding a volume taking "forever"?

Xprmt626

Hi, all,

I upgraded my NAS326 from 3TB drives to 8TB drives, and the individual steps worked (though a long time) until it came to expanding the volumes from 3TB to 8TB. When I hit the "Manage" button and selected the expand option, it starts and never seems to end. It took about 7.5 hours each to move data to each of the larger drives, but the "Volume is expanding" notice has been running well over 24 hours. I was going to just delete the volume and reinstall from backup, but the process won't release and there doesn't appear to be any way to kill it. Any help? Thanks in advance.

Mijzelf

It shouldn't take that long. I would reboot the box, by button if it that is possible, and else by pulling the power. Then look if the resizing completed.

Teligence

I have a similar issue - expanding from 3 to 4 TB RAID 1 on my NAS326. It's been over 8 hours since I started.

The manual states on page 48 (and elsewhere)

"Expanding: The NAS’s percentage progress in expanding the volume. For a RAID 1 volume, this also displays the percentage of resynchronizing the NAS has finished and the evaluated
remaining time."

But the only thing the Status field shows is the word "Expanding".

I restarted using the power button, logged back in, and the volume expansion stopped - with no expanded volume, So I've restarted the expansion for the time being.

If I log out, will the expansion continue?

Mijzelf

If I log out, will the expansion continue?

Yes. Providing it is still expanding, and not errored out without passing that information upstream. If there is no disk activity, it's not expanding.

Teligence

All right, it's been another 9 hours and the expansion still isn't finished. (no errors shown)

Both HDD1 and HDD2 drive LEDs blink every few seconds (and corresponding drive activity is heard) when I log in and open the Storage Manager app (which shows Status: Expanding). If I close the Storage manager app, the HDD1/2 LEDs remain solid, but with no audible disk activity until an action that requires activity such as reading, writing, copying. etc. then goes back to solid.

NAS326 (RAID 1, new, unused HGST Ultrastar 7K4000 drives (older shelf stock - never rotated into use).

Expansion is only adding 1TB (from 3 to 4 TB)

Firmware version: V5.21(AAZF.14)

Since apparently something isn't working right, I'm looking for options.

Is using a 3rd party partitioning utility (such as EASEUS Partition Master) an option? (assuming RAID integrity can be maintained, I expect it should only take a few minutes)

Maybe break the RAID, expand the single drive, then rebuild the RAID? (several hours, but the expansion process is still an unknown - especially since there is no progress status as specified in the "NAS326_V5.21 ed3.pdf" User's Guide).

Reset, reconfigure to max size, and restore from backup? (several hours)

Is there something else to try?

Mijzelf

Is using a 3rd party partitioning utility (such as EASEUS Partition Master) an option?

In theory any utility which understands both Linux software raid and ext4 can do the job, if you can connect both disks simultaneously to a PC running the software.

Is there something else to try?

First find out where it's stalled. Expanding can be divided in 3 steps

1. Expand the data partitions
2. Expand the raid array
3. Expand the filesystem.

By executing 'cat /proc/partitions' you can see if step 1 and 2 are finished. (Likely). 'df -h' can show if step 3 is finished. Step 3 can fail if there is a file system error. resize2fs refuses to expand (or shrink) the filesystem when there are filesystem errors.

Elsewhere in this forum I have written how to repair the filesystem manually. It boils down to intercepting the shutdown, so you can run e2fsck on the filesystem when it's no longer mounted.

Teligence

Teligence

- Shut down NAS via power button
- Removed both drives
- Powered on NAS (driveless)
- Shut down NAS via power button
- reinserted drives into previous orientation
- Powered on NAS
- Started Volume Expansion (again). Still no Status progress indicated - just "Expanding".
- Noted CPU (via gui) running 80-100% vs. 9-16% before.

How do I get the progress to show as the User's Guide says it should? "Murphy" says that it was probably only 1 minute to completion before I took my last action…

Mijzelf

How do I get the progress to show as the User's Guide says it should?

Don't know. Actually I wouldn't be surprised when it's a bug in the manual, as it's not predictable how long it could take. From the steps I distinguished about step 1 should be instantaneous. Step 2 too, I think, but maybe not when the disks are mirrored first. Step 3 first runs a filesystem check. That can take less than a second when the 'all clear' bit is set, but can also take minutes when there is a complex filesystem without errors, and without the 'all clear' bit. During that check there is no progress feedback, as the utility itself doesn't know that.

When there are no filesystem errors the filesystem is expanded. The resize2fs utility gives some feedback. It tells how much superblocks have to be created, and lists them while creating. So that last part could give a progress bar, when there is an in-depth parsing of the utility output.