Upgrade Harddrives on N2100 RAID?

[hdbaumeister]

Hi all, can someone tell me if my plan here will work:

I'm running out of space on my N2100 (set up with RAID-1), so I plan to buy two new hard drives an:

1) replace one of the old hard disks with a new one
2) rebuild the RAID
3) replace the other old hard disk with a new one
4) rebuild RAID again

my goal would be to then have more space available.

Will this work?

[eldigby]

No, it won't. You'll still only have the same storage capacity (The remaining space on the large drives will be unused after rebuilding takes place).

Since my raid was mirrored rather than striped, I was able to put one of the old hard drives into a USB eSATA case, run a linux live disc on my laptop and transferred everything to the new hard disks over gigalan

[tsuma]

eldigby, what linux boot disc and tools did you use? I tried the Parted Magic boot CD, and the GPARTED tool doesn't recognize the ext3 thecus partition.

I also tried cloning with another utility, but the available space did not increase (I am going from a 300 MB Seagate to a 1TB Samsung Eco drive).

It seems that most other partition management tools are oriented toward setting up a linux boot partition with associated swap files, not just pure ext3 partition creation and resizing.

[ryebank]

I'd be really interested in how you get on with this - I am about to do almost exactly the same upgrade (Seagate 330GB to Samsung 1TB ecos in my case). I am using RAID 1 (mirror) - my plan was going to be:

1. Take out the 330GB Seagates
2. Install the 1TB Samsungs and initialise new RAID on these then take them out again
3. Attach one of the the old Seagates and the primary Samsung to a PC which I'll boot to Linux and copy file from Seagate to Samsung
4. Put the primary Samsung back into the n2100 and reboot - raid will be degraded - turn off install the secondary Samsung and let RAID rebuild

Only thing I am not sure about in this is access rights etc that may need redoing

[kronemerk]

I'm thinking of doing a similar upgrade.

Would this work?

I currently us WIN XP and am unfamiliar w Linux. Currently I have 2 500GB drive in a RAID 1.

My plan is to pull out both drives, and install 2 1TB drives, and rebuild a new RAID.

Then take one of the original 500GB, put it in an ext enclosure and plug it in to one of the USB ports on the 2100. (I believe I should be able to see the drive over the Samba interface on my XP machine.)

Then I would copy the 500 GB drive to the new 1 TB Raid.

Thanks for your advise

[fhall1]

To piggyback on this thread.....I'm thinking of taking out my RAID 1 320GB drives and replacing them with two 2 TB drives RAID 1. If I do this, do I have to redo all the configuration data for the NAS? Accounts, groups, permissions, etc?

[andyw1691]

I did this in December. Firstly I copied all the data from my original 500 GB disks to other PC's, Shut down the N2100, replaced the disks with 2x2TB drives and turned the N2100 on. It took some time to rebuild the raid 1 array :-)

All previous settings (users, groups and ACLs) were unchanged. Once the raid 1 initialisation had completed I recreated the top level folders for the users. I then copied all the data back into the users folders. Once the ACL's had been re-applied everything was back to how it was before but with a lot more free space.

While I don't think this is related to the upgrade, I should mention that I had an issue with folder permissions on one of the top level folders. I engaged Thecus Tech support to try and help resolve the issue and received a message which contained the following:

"- The drive has a block size of 4K and 512 Bytes block size HDD's are supported only
- The N2100 supports up to 500GB only, 2TB is out of spec"

I have two Weston Digital 2TB drives configures as a Raid 1 array. They are working perfectly well, run cooler and quieter than the Seagates they replaced. So while it might not be supported by Thecus it seems to work. ;D

Andy

[fhall1]

Thanks andyw....I was hoping the settings wouldn't have to be re-done.

Maybe try calling Thecus again and "fib" about the disk size? Since it's a permissions issue on one account the disk capacity should have nothing to do with it.

[andyw1691]

I managed to reset the permissions myself using the SSH module. It would have been a very simple thing to do for someone who knows linux. For me it took a lot longer! A very intense course of unix commands and understanding how to get at the functionality of the modules installed on the N2100 was required.

The permissions problem has been fixed and the unit is working perfectly. It might not be officially supported, but it works and should last me another couple of years.

Good luck with your upgrade :-)

[fhall1]

Thanks....I'm looking at getting two of the 2TB WD Green WD20EARS drives to replace two 320 GB Seagates I've been running for years in RAID 1.

Got a WD TV Live Plus for Xmas and looking at ripping DVDs to the NAS to eliminate the need to have to store the physical DVDs in the living room. 320 GB was good for my music CD rips (plus other assorted stuff), but video rips will eat up space quickly.

Are you using the WD20EARS drives?

[andyw1691]

Yes, I'm using two 2TB WD Green WD20EARS drives in a raid 1 array. They are very quiet and run cooler than the disks they replaced.

Note that they have a reported capacity of 1,907,729 MB

Cheers, Andy

[andyw1691]

Just to update this thread as I had an issue with iTunes Server after the upgrade. The response from Thecus Tech Support says "The N2100 supports HDD's up to 500GB, the WD EARS you have installed are 2TB. Next that, the EARS drives do have a block size of 4K, but the N2100 supports 512 byte block sized HDD's only. This will cause that the RAID is misaligned, which will cause stability issues."

I'm not quite sure what the statement about the RAID becoming misaligned means, but it seems the N2100 is limited to 500GB disks with 512 byte blocks. In my case the instability was the iTunes Server stopped working.