Reversing RAID

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jacknjill88
Posts: 2
youtube meble na wymiar Warszawa
Joined: Mon May 10, 2021 5:33 pm

Reversing RAID

Post by jacknjill88 »

Hi all,

New here, and to NAS in general. I just bought a second hard drive and put it into the NAS device. For some reason, I changed my single drive to RAID 1, but this mirrored the first drive (which I know now is what it was supposed to do). I actually just wanted to expand my hard drive capacity rather than mirroring for backups. So my question, is there a way that this can be reversed or a potential other solution to this?
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father.mande
Posts: 1810
Joined: Sat Sep 12, 2015 2:55 am
Location: La Rochelle (France)

Re: Reversing RAID

Post by father.mande »

Hi,
jacknjill88 wrote:Hi all,
New here, and to NAS in general. I just bought a second hard drive and put it into the NAS device. For some reason, I changed my single drive to RAID 1, but this mirrored the first drive (which I know now is what it was supposed to do). I actually just wanted to expand my hard drive capacity rather than mirroring for backups. So my question, is there a way that this can be reversed or a potential other solution to this?
A.D.M. is a Linux ... but more like an embedded one versus a standard Linux distribution (Ubuntu, Debian, etc. etc.)
A.D.M. (as other NAS) use a specific partition architecture ...
each disk is formatted with 4 partitions (ex. sda have sda1, sda2, sda3 and sda4)
Part 1 is for boot (grub)
Part 2 is a Raid1 for A.D.M. configuration (as volume0)
Part 3 is a Raid1 for swap
Part 4 is a Raid1(or more) for your data with a file system ext4 or now brtfs

EVEN in single mode (one disk) ... it's configured as Raid 1 for 3 Partitions .
Not easily, in a true, complete Linux ... it's possible for Raid1 to remove a disk ... but for A.D.M. I don't know AND IN ALL CASE a backup is MANDATORY.
... so do a backup using A.D.M. tools or manually.

So ask support ...

possible scenario (but to be honest, I use it years ago ... so not sure it's always possible)
... have an USB disk box (usb3 is better)
... plug out the second disk of your actual Raid 1
... ... try to read the data (re-assemble the Raid on another Linux system or VM and mount it (ext4 or btrfs) and verify data is accessible (part 4 only))
if all is ok got next step, if not
... plug second disk using USB box
... format it and save data (Raid1 of the NAS is in degraded mode but can be read for backup) ... if some folder are not necessary ... ignore it
next step
... mount the new disk (larger)
... initialize the NAS (new A.D.M.) and reinstall APKG
... ... mount the USB box (re-assemble again Part 4 Raid) and copy tback data to the new disk
... ... OR restore your A.D.M. backup ...

BUT be sure the good solution is to ask the support ... :mrgreen: :mrgreen:

Philippe.
AS6602T / AS5202T /AS5002T / AS1002T / FS6706T
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orion
Posts: 3482
Joined: Wed May 29, 2013 11:09 am

Re: Reversing RAID

Post by orion »

ADM only supports several ways to expand volume capacity: https://www.asustor.com/en-gb/online/Co ... ?topic=352. So the answer of your question should be no.
jacknjill88
Posts: 2
Joined: Mon May 10, 2021 5:33 pm

Re: Reversing RAID

Post by jacknjill88 »

Sorry for my late reply. Thank you both for your answers!
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