Preserving data on a ext4 HDD

[ivan]

Hi,

I have an AS5202T and like to add an ext4 formatted HDD with about 4TB of data without wiping it.
How can this be done?
I have a backup but don't want to unnecessarily shuffle all that data around again.
Thank you.

Kind regards

[orion]

2 options:

• Put this disk to an USB external box, then connect to NAS.
• Put this disk to an internal bay. You can use "mount" command manually (by means of ssh) to mount your data. No ADM UI available.

[ivan]

Thanks for your reply.

Actually I tried to mount it via ssh before but failed to do so.
Now I found out why that was the case: the HDD was somehow configured as RAID.
I have no clue why though as the HDD was setup with the NAS and I most certainly chose JBOD (the other drive is a 480 GB SSD...).
Then I reset the NAS because I couldn't access it with ssh anymore.

After running `mdadm --assemble --run /dev/md2 /dev/sdb4` I could finally mount it.

But I still can't manage it with the web-GUI.
How can I do that?

[orion]

OK, your disk is actually the one that configured by ADM. ADM configure disk as RAID, no matter it's single, JBOD...

No, you cannot manage it within ADM UI (because you did it by yourself, rather than ADM).

[ivan]

Well, thanks anyway.

[CygnusBlack]

Hi

With the --assemble option I get a "/dev/sdb has no superblock - assembly aborted" error.
Also, the 10TB HD is detected as a 1.2TB volume...
There's nothing physically wrong with the twin drives either.

I guess this is going to be more difficult than I could have imagined.

Edit: mhhh...I'm starting to wonder if the problem is coming from the USB dock station I'm using. I'll try with another one later.

[ilike2burnthing]

Try adding --force --verbose to --assemble and see what the output is (or if it's successful)

[orion]

Hi

With the --assemble option I get a "/dev/sdb has no superblock - assembly aborted" error.
Also, the 10TB HD is detected as a 1.2TB volume...
There's nothing physically wrong with the twin drives either.

I guess this is going to be more difficult than I could have imagined.

Edit: mhhh...I'm starting to wonder if the problem is coming from the USB dock station I'm using. I'll try with another one later.

Your command syntax should be wrong. Normally it should be /dev/sdb4 if your disk is the original one on NAS internal bay.