How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

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Jj007
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How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by Jj007 »

Hi All,
I have an old ASUSTOR AS302-t. (Twin hot swap bay).
It currently has a 4tb drive and a 1tb drive installed running each disk as singles.
It’s almost maxed out it’s storage capacity so i have bought two 8tb seagate ironwolf drives.
I want to install them in RAID 1 so I have redundancy.
What is the best method to migrate my data across to RAID1?
Currently both ‘single’ drives are in EXT4 format.
Should I remove the original 1tb drive and replace it with the new 8tb drive, keep system as singles, copy data from 4tb to 8tb. Then pull out the 4tb drive and replace it with the 1tb, again leave as singles and copy the 1tb data across to the 8tb so the 8tb now contains both the 4 tab and 1 tab data. Then pull out of the 1 tb drive and replace it with the second 8tb drive, then convert to raid 1 and the system should pull then mirror the data to the second 8tb drive?
—-
The NAS is used for storage and in general does not require fast drive reads.
Any assistance/opinions are appreciated in advance.
Thanks
J.
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orion
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Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by orion »

If your volume 2 is 1TB disk and you know Linux commands well, you can do the way you mentioned. No GUI for this function.

Normal way is:
  • Backup volume-2 data to external storage.
  • Destroy volume-2
  • Remove volume-2 disk. Insert one 8TB disk. Migrate volume-1 to RAID-1.
  • After done, remove the other old disk. Insert the other new 8TB disk. System should rebuild RAID-1 automatically.
  • After done, increase volume-1 size to 8TB.
  • After done, copy external volume-2 data back.
Jj007
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:54 pm

Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by Jj007 »

Hi Orion,
Thank you for your reply & suggestion.
I think your second option sounds best.
I have a single external usb3, 3TB drive.
I will use this to back up the 1TB drive as you have suggested and then follow the rest of your instructions.

Can you tell me… I have already used the “remove” function for volume-2 (the 1tb drive), how can i re-add this volume so that i can carry out your instructions. If i use the “create’ function and select the 1tb drive it says the data will be deleted.*
[Edit] oops have i deleted the data on the drive? Or have I just deleted the ‘table of contents’? I have products like Paragons partition manager pro / recovery and an old product called “recover my files”. Will i need them?
Any idea on how i can restore this volume?[/edit]

Regards
J.
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orion
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Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by orion »

If you created a new volume on 1TB disk, you deleted your data totally. I don't know if there are any tools that can recover data (I believe no).
The first step in my recommended procedure is to "Backup volume-2 data to external storage".
Jj007
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:54 pm

Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by Jj007 »

Hi Orion.
Having clicked the [remove] (volume) button and agreeing to the prompt nothing further has been done to the drive.
No new partitions or volumes or data writes have occurred.
I have checked the drive with recovery software and the data is still present, all be it every iteration of the same data that was ever written to the drive. This makes it a huge task of eliminating all of the duplicate files written at earlier dates.
This makes finding out if “remove” can be reversed more desirable, if its possible, the file backup can then proceed in the normal way.

As no writes to the drive have occurred since the volume removal action, is there a way to reverse the remove so the volume reappears in the NAS and the files appear as they were pre volume removal?

Once i have established the answer to this, I can then move onto the next action, be that undoing the restore or extracting the files using recovery software.
After I have the files back (using which ever method is possible) I will then proceed with your original flow to upgrading the NAS capacity in a RAID 1 format.

Would be great if you or anyone else knows if “Remove” volume can be reversed. I think remove only dumps the table referencing where all the data is located on the disk.
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orion
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Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by orion »

If you did not "created" a volume onto the old disk, your data might remain the same. Not sure what recovery software you are using. You can try to use Ubuntu system to mount the disk.
Jj007
Posts: 4
Joined: Thu Dec 02, 2021 11:54 pm

Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by Jj007 »

Hi all,
Subsequent to my [Remove volume] mistake, I then proceeded with the drive upgrades and process to convert to RAID1.
Having completed that task I have run into two further issues. Not sure if the apps one is related to the fact I deleted a volume earlier.

Problem 01: RAID/Drive capacities are reporting incorrectly or have not expanded capacity properly.
Currently reporting as: Volume 1 RAID 1 - 16.32TB free of 3.58TB (total capacity 3.58TB)
Should be reporting as: Volume 1 RAID 1 - circa 4TB free of circa 8TB (total capacity 8TB)
Problem 02: Some installed apps are now greyed out and will not uninstall and new apps will NOT install. I cannot get seagate Ironwolf app to install.
—————
Previously I had two HDDs (4+1TB total) configured as RAID “Singles” ie no protection for either drive. Each drive contained a volume. HDDa Vol1 : HDDb Vol2.
As part of a HDD upgrade to increase storage capacity & convert to the protection of RAID1, I incorrectly used the [Remove Volume] function on Vol2 prior to backing up data. I have recovered this data now from the removed volume thankfully but i was not able to restore the volume, hence i continued with the upgrade process.
I followed Orions instructions and physically removed HDDb that had contained the ‘removed volume’ (Vol2) and replaced it with a new seagate ironwolf 8TB drive (lets call this drive HDDd) and configured the NAS to RAID1. The NAS then proceeded to mirror the existing HDDa across to the new HDDd.
I then removed HDDa and replaced it with a second new seagate ironwood 8TB drive (lets call this drive HDDc). Again the NAS mirrored the data across to the new drive.
So now I have 2x8TB seagate drives configured in RAID1 with 1 single volume. I then used the expand capacity option. The correct messages displayed and eventually reported as, STATUS: Expanding Capacity (100%).
Currently reporting as: Volume 1 RAID 1 - 16.32TB free of 3.58TB (total capacity 3.58TB)
Should be reporting as: Volume 1 RAID 1 - circa 4TB free of circa 8TB (total capacity 8TB) Right?
Can anyone help me resolve this please?
After performing all of the above, I then found some apps were greyed out like ironwolf and a syslog server. I stuggled to get them uninstalled as they appeared non operational (now appear to have been uninstalled as no longer display) and now I cannot get them or other apps installed. When attempting to install i get error, “Unknown error.: Cannot apply settings. (Ref. 5401)”
Any one experiences this before? Can you advise?
I really don’t want to restore everything as I can’t remember 3/4 of the config I previously slogged through to achieve all the cool stuff I set up. If I can’t resolve. I may just have to bite the bullet and change brand and go though everything again.
This is ‘nix based so it should be rock solid and not present unexpected behaviour.
RAID1 drive capacity incorrect
RAID1 drive capacity incorrect
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C49D0503-2DB6-48E8-ACE8-5210DDEB3EF6.jpeg (162.39 KiB) Viewed 3359 times
Cannot install iron wolf app
Cannot install iron wolf app
96AFCC11-F658-4A96-9027-542980ECE8C8.jpeg (238.93 KiB) Viewed 3359 times
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orion
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Re: How to upgrade from two single drives to two 8tb drives in raid 1

Post by orion »

I would suggest you to send a support request to asustor: https://support.asustor.com/. The information you showed is indeed abnormal. However it's hard to check what's the problem without detailed logs. Asustor guy should be able to gather logs remotely.
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