procedure to replace a drive on NSA320

bbacher
bbacher Posts: 6  Freshman Member
edited October 2018 in Personal Cloud Storage
My NSA320 has a 1TB and a 3TB drive, set up in JBOD configuration.  The 3TB drive is consistently throwing a red light after a few days.  I can turn the unit off/on and then it shows green, but a few days later it's red again.

I have bought a 4TB disk to replace the 3TB.  What's the right procedure to avoid losing data?

I thought maybe I could use ddrescue to copy the 3TB to the 4TB, then just stick the 4TB in the box.... Will that work?

#NAS_Sep

Accepted Solution

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,598  Guru Member
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    You basically have 2 choices. Do a binary copy like ddrescue, and enlarge the partition, raid container and filesystem, or create a new volume on the new disk, and then copy over the content.
    I'd prefer the latter choice.

All Replies

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,598  Guru Member
    First Anniversary 10 Comments Friend Collector First Answer
    Will that work?

    Yes. But the volume will be only 3TB

  • bbacher
    bbacher Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    Oh, I see...

    Is there a way to simply get the files off the old drive onto the new one, then put the new one into the JBOD config?  IE - to get the full 4TB capacity
  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,598  Guru Member
    First Anniversary 10 Comments Friend Collector First Answer
    Answer ✓
    You basically have 2 choices. Do a binary copy like ddrescue, and enlarge the partition, raid container and filesystem, or create a new volume on the new disk, and then copy over the content.
    I'd prefer the latter choice.
  • bbacher
    bbacher Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    OK, I wasn't sure I would have access to the files directly.  I don't know what kind of file structure the JBOD config imposes on the disk.
  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,598  Guru Member
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    To be clear, with JBOD you mean you have 2 volumes, one for each disk?
  • bbacher
    bbacher Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    No...  the device gave me the option to set up RAID or JBOD (Just a Bunch of Disk).  I couldn't do RAID because the drives I had were different sizes.  I don't think they'd be considered 2 separate volumes.


  • bbacher
    bbacher Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    I just read this on another forum for another NAS device:

    "JBOD cannot be converted to anything else nor can it be expanded nor can the drives be replaced. You need to backup your data, rebuild the NAS from scratch, and restore your data."

    :/

  • Mijzelf
    Mijzelf Posts: 2,598  Guru Member
    First Anniversary 10 Comments Friend Collector First Answer
    "JBOD cannot be converted to anything else nor can it be expanded nor can the drives be replaced. You need to backup your data, rebuild the NAS from scratch, and restore your data."

    Well, yes, that's the theory. But if your 3TB disk happens to be the last one in the array, it should be possible to enlarge the array.

    In that case you should create a binary copy of the 2nd raidmember. Use a partition tool to grow the data partition. Let the NAS assemble the array. Grow it (there is room, as there is unused partition space behind the array), and finally resize the filesystem.

    Of course you shouldn't try this if your data is indispensable, but in that case you shouldn't use a linear array anyway.

    To see if the 3TB disk is the 2nd member, you should login over telnet/ssh (Telnet backdoor) and execute

    cat /proc/partitions<br>cat /proc/mdstat<br>
    The first line will give the device names of the partitions, and the 2nd one how they are used in the array.

  • bbacher
    bbacher Posts: 6  Freshman Member
    Thanks, I'll give it a shot.  I know more about this now than I did a few days ago.  Knowing what I do now, I can see that I made some problematic choices early on. 

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