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Adding a Hard Drive form and older XPEnology Version


psionguy

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Have just tried to add a couple of Hard Drive from my earlier XPEnology set up to find that DSM wants to download a new image, I naively thought it would accept the drives or incorporate them without a new firmware. My question is after spending a lot of time setting up a new bare metal system, will I have to start from scratch, or will DSM save my settings, or would it be better to format the drives.

 

Any guidance would be very much appreciated.

 

 

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to know how the system works helps a lot

 

on a dsm system every disk contains a 2 GB system and a 2.4 GB swap partition all 2 GB partitions over all disks are in a raid1 mdadm raidset, same goes for the 2.4 GB partitions, the space behind that is free to use for user created raids

 

if you set up a new system with 2 new disks and install dsm and after this you insert 3 older disks the older system and swap contain different system and the only way is to overwrite the old system this step of creating/overwriting this 2 partitions ans making them part of the existing raid1 is called initialize, the user created raid partitions behind system/swap will remain untouched by dsm and if dsm recognises it as raids it should show up, so if the 3 added disks in the old system where a raid5 set of 3 disks the data of that raid should show up

if you want the system of that 3 disks "updated" you should insert them alone and boot with the new loader, it should be shown as migrateable in synology assistant, if you upgrade to the newer dsm and also update the plugins there is a good chance to keep the configuration (at least part of it)

the plugin configuration is stored on a user created partition (dsm will not install plugins if there is no data partitions created)

 

 

 

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On 1/25/2018 at 3:28 AM, IG-88 said:

to know how the system works helps a lot

 

on a dsm system every disk contains a 2 GB system and a 2.4 GB swap partition all 2 GB partitions over all disks are in a raid1 mdadm raidset, same goes for the 2.4 GB partitions, the space behind that is free to use for user created raids

 

if you set up a new system with 2 new disks and install dsm and after this you insert 3 older disks the older system and swap contain different system and the only way is to overwrite the old system this step of creating/overwriting this 2 partitions ans making them part of the existing raid1 is called initialize, the user created raid partitions behind system/swap will remain untouched by dsm and if dsm recognises it as raids it should show up, so if the 3 added disks in the old system where a raid5 set of 3 disks the data of that raid should show up

if you want the system of that 3 disks "updated" you should insert them alone and boot with the new loader, it should be shown as migrateable in synology assistant, if you upgrade to the newer dsm and also update the plugins there is a good chance to keep the configuration (at least part of it)

the plugin configuration is stored on a user created partition (dsm will not install plugins if there is no data partitions created)

 

Appreciate your help, decided to bite the bullet and went for the online image update, and you were correct it did save some of my settings, but from my original setup, not the new one. Still it did not take me long to get it up and running, experienced gain from my second setup helped me through.

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On 1/25/2018 at 11:19 AM, psionguy said:

Appreciate your help, decided to bite the bullet and went for the online image update, and you were correct it did save some of my settings, but from my original setup, not the new one. Still it did not take me long to get it up and running, experienced gain from my second setup helped me through.

 

i tried to explain both option (keeping new installed system and updating old system) - looks like i was not successful  with it, maybe i should have split it better in to scenarios?

Edited by IG-88
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  • Polanskiman changed the title to Adding a Hard Drive form and older XPEnology Version

My experience of playing around with drives that have had different versions of DSM on them, is that whichever drive is on the lowest sata channel will be the version 'booted', other drives will show a failed system partition. The system will be 'recoverable' or 'migratable' depending on the XPE loader used.

 

 

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5 minutes ago, sbv3000 said:

is that whichever drive is on the lowest sata channel will be the version 'booted',

 

yes but its not always clear what sata is first, it might depend on bios settings and you can assume defaults but sometimes people had already tried things and might have changed settings

if you know your hardware and you have experience ... but lots of people cant predict whats first

if your board just has 2 sata ports and they are labeled sata0 and sata1 then its clear but if it has a additional controller and you change boot order so that one comes first or you disabled the first onboard controller, ... - guessing can be dangerous if you have not all information

my board has 3 onboard controllers, chipset + two different marvell chips and if i would add another as pcie card then there are a lot of possibilities (and if you read whats written on the systemboard near the sata ports - every sata port from a different controller starts with with a "0" and counts its own ports)

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17 hours ago, IG-88 said:

 

yes but its not always clear what sata is first, it might depend on bios settings and you can assume defaults but sometimes people had already tried things and might have changed settings

if you know your hardware and you have experience ... but lots of people cant predict whats first

if your board just has 2 sata ports and they are labeled sata0 and sata1 then its clear but if it has a additional controller and you change boot order so that one comes first or you disabled the first onboard controller, ... - guessing can be dangerous if you have not all information

my board has 3 onboard controllers, chipset + two different marvell chips and if i would add another as pcie card then there are a lot of possibilities (and if you read whats written on the systemboard near the sata ports - every sata port from a different controller starts with with a "0" and counts its own ports)

I agree with you 100% - its about knowing your kit. I always do a test build with any new mobos, controllers, NICs etc to work out slots/channels and how they appear in DSM. Then I document and label for future reference. But not everyone is not so methodical so will need to take care! 

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On 1/25/2018 at 8:02 PM, IG-88 said:

 

i tried to explain both option (keeping new installed system and updating old system) - looks like i was not successful  with it, maybe i should have split it better in to scenarios?

Your post was a great help to me, the difference between my old set up and new was minimal, the important aspect was that it was still 6.1, which it was.  All the hard drive. apart from one are fine, so a little more work to get that sorted and I will be up and running.

 

Thanks again

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