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Hard Drive Upgrade


finn_uk

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Hello all,

 

Firstly let me apologise in advance, I am an utter noob with this!

 

I recently purchased an N54L and, wanting to install software that was as user friendly as possible, decided to install XPEnology which I have so far been very pleased with.

 

I have the 256GB drive that the server came with, plus 2x3TB WD Reds. I now have 2 more 3TB WD Reds on order and my questions is this...

 

If I want to replace the 256GB drive for one of the WDs, is it simply a cases of physically replacing it and XPEnology will do the rest data-wise? Or would I need to take a full backup first and do some sort of re-build?

 

I have tried to search this but only find posts relating to replacing failed drives, probably the same thing but I thought I'd check!

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Haven't done this yet, but my experience tells me that the following actions will help you achieve the goal:

1. plug in one of your new HDDs and start your NAS the normal way

2. Go to Storage Manager in DSM -> Volume -> Manage -> Expand the volume by adding hard disks

3. A consistency check should start after finishing step 2. Only after this step has finished successfully you can go to step 4

4. Shutdown your NAS, remove the small HDD and connect the 2nd new HDD

5. Go to Storage Manager in DSM -> Volume -> Manage -> Expand the volume by adding hard disks

6. A consistency check should start after finishing step 5

7. Your new volume should be ready to rumble!

 

This small how-to applies if you have a SHR-1/RAID5 type volume

 

Cheers and good luck!

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What Schnapps says should work... But as your current disk is so small I'd prefer to (in order of what I'd do):

 

1) Start again with the WDs and use a host computer to transfer the 250GB to the new SHR volume over the network.

2) Start again with the WDs and use a spare bay in the N54L to transfer the 250GB to the new SHR volume locally.

3) Add 2-3 WDs to the existing setup, create a brand new SHR volume and copy over the 250GB locally. Then dump the 250GB and expand the new volume with the new WDs.

 

Assuming that you want to run SHR over the 4 WDs of course.

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  • 4 months later...

OP, were you able to go from 3 drives in a 4 drive-bay system to 4 drives, 2 of which were new?

 

Is there a path to replacing a functioning drive with a larger one without backing up the entire Disk Group? Especially in a JBOD configuration where there is no redundancy?

 

For example, Windows Home Server had a process where you could take a hard drive out of service administratively assuming your data would fit in the remaining drives, then replace the drive physically with a larger one and add it back to the volume administratively.

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If it's JBOD, then the data on that disk is only on that disk. That's the way mine is configured, with each disk having one volume on it (not bothered with disk groups, although looking now I've got two, each with on disk on, and one disk not in any group!). To upgrade, I just put the new disk in the spare slot, copy files over from a smaller disk and then replace the smaller disk. Then copy the files back if you need to retain volume naming.

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Shteve,

 

I have two drives in a disk group configured as JBOD which, in hindsight, was probably not the greatest idea since both drives worth of data will have to be backed up even if I only want to upgrade one of them. In the future, I will keep them as separate volumes and try to figure out a way to make them appear as one through symbolic links.

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