Upgrade/expansion - help[ needed...

[dizzyfish]

Help! I have the new 4 bay AS5304T and I have migrated the 2 old 4TB disks from my old AS202TE enclosure. ADM and all apps are up to date.

I have purchased 2 new Seagate Ironwolf pro 12TB disks, and I want to use these to replace the existing 2 x 4TB disks (RAID 1). I have followed the instructions,in storage manager to replace existing drives with new ones... I take out one of the old 4TB drives and put in one of my new 12TB drives, but the status keeps saying replace and I get a constant beeping (I expected the status to say Synchronising or rebuilding). Its almost like the new disk isn't recognized.... please help - does the new drive need to be formatted maybe, before adding it?

[Nazar78]

There might be exiting partitions in the new drive? Enable SSH, then using Putty for Windows or terminal for others, ssh into the NAS using one of the admin account. Run this command and post your results (the new disk is already in the 1st bay):

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sudo fdisk -l

[dizzyfish]

Before I saw your reply, I aborted the process, took the new 12TB disk out of drive bay 2, and put the old 4TB disk back into bay 2.... now it is syncing back the old drive (looks like that is going to take 6 hours, and then I am back to square one!).

Once its back to the old state (2 x 4TB RAID 1 drives), is there any way I can add one of the new 12TB drives into the new enclosure (eg. add it into free bays 3 or 4 and look at the drives) to look at it, without invoking another synchronisation/expansion? If not, then I am a bit stuck - not too impressed, as none of this was mentioned anywhere, I just assumed I could buy a new disk and add it into the NAS.

[Nazar78]

Before I saw your reply, I aborted the process, took the new 12TB disk out of drive bay 2, and put the old 4TB disk back into bay 2.... now it is syncing back the old drive (looks like that is going to take 6 hours, and then I am back to square one!).

To revert, you should have cancelled and shutdown the NAS, then only swap back the old disk. If you do a online hot swap, it will start synchronizing assuming the previous disk state failed thus disk replaced. This is not specific to Asustor NAS, all RAID, hardware controller or software including Linux MDADM works this way.

Once its back to the old state (2 x 4TB RAID 1 drives), is there any way I can add one of the new 12TB drives into the new enclosure (eg. add it into free bays 3 or 4 and look at the drives) to look at it, without invoking another synchronisation/expansion? If not, then I am a bit stuck - not too impressed, as none of this was mentioned anywhere, I just assumed I could buy a new disk and add it into the NAS.

Yes you can obviously put any new disks as a standalone but if you choose to do this now, you'll be left with the old slower drives running as the RAID1.

While waiting for the sync to complete, you can also put in the new disks in bay 3 and 4 then check if there's existing partitions (by using the list partitions command I stated previously) which should be cleared prior migration. Then you can choose to abort the sync and repeat the migration process, or choose to wait as you're left with only one RAID1 disk because you just destroyed the other mirror by doing a hot swap.

Tips: anything you do if unsure, do not pull off the disks attempting to do a hot swap while the NAS is online. Shut it off first. Hot swap on RAID is done only for disks replacements.

[dizzyfish]

So just to clarify - I can continue the sync process to get back to 2 x 4 TB RAID 1 in enclosure 1 and 2, and whilst that process is continuing and the NAS is on, I can add the 2 new 12TB drives into enclosures 3 and 4 and run the command you showed above (without affecting the sync, or making the NAS think I want to do something else with the new 12TB drives)?

Hopefully that command will allow you to see what is up with the 2 12TB drives, and then hopefully I can start to replace the original 2 x 4TB RAID 1 drives with the new 12TB drives (I want to end up with just the 2 x 12TB drives in RAID 1)

[Nazar78]

Yes, and for assurance, do label the trays and disks clearly #1,2,3,4 to avoid mishandling.

[dizzyfish]

Ok, so I have successfully logged into the NAS using Windows PuTTY

I have the old drives syncing in bays 1 and 2 and one of the new 12TB disks in bay 3 (I don't have putty). Can you talk me through what I need to do next? (The PuTTY prompt looks like it is looking at :/volume1/home/admin which is the old RAID 1 4TB disks in bays 1 and 2)

[Nazar78]

Put in the two new disks in the bay 3 and 4, run the command sudo `fdisk -l` and post the results.

[dizzyfish]

Hi @Nazar78. See below for the output of the ssh command....

admin@DizzyNAS:/volume1/home/admin $ sudo fdisk -l
Password:
fdisk: device has more than 2^32 sectors, can't use all of them
Disk /dev/sda: 2048 GB, 2199023255040 bytes, 4294967295 sectors
267349 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot StartCHS EndCHS StartLBA EndLBA Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sda1 0,32,33 32,162,2 2048 524287 522240 255M 83 Linux
/dev/sda4 0,0,2 0,32,32 1 2047 2047 1023K ee EFI GPT

Partition table entries are not in disk order
Disk /dev/md0: 2046 MB, 2146369536 bytes, 4192128 sectors
524016 cylinders, 2 heads, 4 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/md0 doesn't contain a valid partition table
Disk /dev/md126: 2046 MB, 2146369536 bytes, 4192128 sectors
524016 cylinders, 2 heads, 4 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/md126 doesn't contain a valid partition table
fdisk: device has more than 2^32 sectors, can't use all of them
Disk /dev/md1: 2048 GB, 2199023255040 bytes, 4294967295 sectors
536870911 cylinders, 2 heads, 4 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/md1 doesn't contain a valid partition table
fdisk: device has more than 2^32 sectors, can't use all of them
Disk /dev/sdb: 2048 GB, 2199023255040 bytes, 4294967295 sectors
267349 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Device Boot StartCHS EndCHS StartLBA EndLBA Sectors Size Id Type
/dev/sdb1 0,32,33 32,162,2 2048 524287 522240 255M 83 Linux
/dev/sdb4 0,0,2 0,32,32 1 2047 2047 1023K ee EFI GPT

Partition table entries are not in disk order
fdisk: device has more than 2^32 sectors, can't use all of them
Disk /dev/sdc: 2048 GB, 2199023255040 bytes, 4294967295 sectors
267349 cylinders, 255 heads, 63 sectors/track
Units: sectors of 1 * 512 = 512 bytes

Disk /dev/sdc doesn't contain a valid partition table
admin@DizzyNAS:/volume1/home/admin $

[Nazar78]

I only see total of 3 disks /dev/sd{a,b,c}, did you put both the new disks in bay 3 and 4?

Leave the 3rd disk in the 3rd bay and put in the 4th disk, then also run below:

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sudo parted -ls

Your 3rd disk seems ok with no partitions, not sure if this is the disk you tried earlier to migrate and failed. Let's just see the results above, if in fact there's no partitions on the new disks, then something is wrong with the Asustor migration could be a bug or firmware issue I'm not sure. Then you have couple of options, open a ticket with Asustor let them handle it, or make yourself available and let's do a remote session if you want, when your sync completes, PM me your ID of any preferred remote tools i.e. AnyDesk or TeamViewer or Google etc. I have the same model and have manually created several custom RAID on the NAS so I'm quite familiar but have never used the migration wizard as the time to upgrade has not come for me yet. Probably last resort is to do it manually for you.