ASUSTOR Community Forum

I have a 2 bay AS5202T with 2 3Tb drives. I've setup the NAS in a Raid 1 configuration so that all of the files stored to the NAS are automatically backed up. I have swapped out the 2nd drive, put in a new disk, the RAID was rebuilt automatically. The drive I took out becomes the one I put in the safe in case of a fire. I live in fire devastated California so this is a priority concern. Then it occurred to me that if there was a fire and my NAS was destroyed, but I have one of the 2nd drives , would I be able to access it from a Windows laptop and use it to rebuild a new NAS? I bought a hard drive docking station so I could plug the drive into my laptop, but alas Windows doesn't see it.

Is there something I can do to make this drive accessible by windows?

Not Windows, but - https://support.asustor.com/index.php?/ ... using-a-pc

You can install VirtualBox, then install Ubuntu system in this VM under Windows. By this way, you can still recover your data under Windows.

Thank you both for replying. I was really looking for a simple solution that would give me redundancy and an easy way to access my files in an emergency.

I'm considering rebuilding the NAS and making the 2nd drive bay a MyArchive slot, of course then I lose the redundancy and have to have a separate drive-to-drive backup solution. Do you know of any other ways I might setup the NAS to meet both objectives?

phawk1701 wrote:Do you know of any other ways I might setup the NAS to meet both objectives?

Getting a 4-bay model is another "easy way" that you expect.