NSA326 Remove disks from Raid1

fehu

Hi,

I have a NSA326 2-bay NAS with 2 HDDs in RAID1. How can I change it back to RAID0/JBOD without loosing all my data? Is there a linux command to solve this problem?
Thanks.

#NAS_Oct_2018

Mijzelf

No. It might be possible to split it in 2 volumes. But if you can't afford to loose your data, don't try it. You need a backup anyway.

Switch off the NAS, pull one of the disks. Switch on the NAS, login over ssh, and execute

cat /proc/mdstat

It will show the the state of the arrays. The biggest of the raid1 arrays (there are 2 of them), has a failed member, your pulled disk.

Have a look at the name of the failed member, and the name of the array. You can remove the failed member with

mdadm --remove /dev/md5 /dev/sdd2

Where you have to substitute the names of the array and partition.

If this succeeds, you have a single disk RAID1 array. If you now add the 2nd disk, I [i]think[/i] the firmware will allow you to create a 2nd volume on it.

More on mdadm here.

fehu

Thank you Mijzelf, I'll try it.

norm

I never thought of it this way. So potentially if I move from 2x2tb HDD (RAID1) on my Zyxel NSA325 to 2x6tb in a RAID1 I could remove one of the 2tb drives from the array. Then mdadm --remove the failed/removed drive from the RAID1. Then insert a new 6tb drive and create a new array. Then do a straight copy from one RAID array to the other RAID array?

Mijzelf

If you want to upgrade your 2x2TB array to a 2x6TB array without loosing data, it's easier to just pull a disk, and plugin a new disk (switch NAS off first). The array will be degraded, and you can add the new disk in the webinterface. If it's synced (takes hours, of course), exchange the 2nd disk. When it's synced again, the webinterface should allow you to grow the volume to 6TB.