Moving data to new NAS?

[MrPandy]

Hi, newbie question here. I have a RAID 1 NAS and wish to move my disks and data to a new RAID 1 NAS. My guess on how I can do this:
- take one drive from old NAS, install in new NAS (which should reformat it)
- copy data from old NAS to new NAS
- move second drive from old to new
- create mirror on new NAS.

Is there any chance that this would work? Thanks!

 

[claykin]

It should, but I don't recommend it. If you go that route, I would absolutely recommend you shutdown the NAS before removing/adding any disks. Increases the chance that the volume will stay intact through your breaking the array. BTW, some NAS models do not support hot add, so keep that in mind if you are determined to remove/add while the units are powered on. Do your research first.

What I would recommend is you first copy off your data to a USB disk and/or disk in a PC. Then remove one disk from your old NAS and move to new and configure then load data. Finally add the second disk to the NAS to make the volume redundant. Still remove/add disks when the NAS is powered down.

 

[MrPandy]

Thanks for the reply. I was definitely planning on shutting each unit down every time I added or removed a disk. I don't have a USB drive so I'll have to determine if I have enough spare space to copy to the PCs drive.

 

[ntm1275]

Most NAS manufacturers will allow the moving of a raid array from one NAS to another just as long as both NAS's are from the same manufacturer

If going to a different manufacturer, the new NAS will want to format the disk when you install it in the new NAS

The only safe way, so that you don't loose any data, is to back up on to an external drive, move the drives to the new NAS, format the drives in the new NAS, then restore the data from the external drive

 

[MrPandy]

I guess my question was this:

Old NAS (NAS1) containing two disks (D1 and D2 in Raid 1 configuration) and new NAS (NAS2) from different manufacturer containing no disks.
Each NAS will be turned off when disks are moved.

If D1 and D2 are identical in a Raid 1, can I move D2 to NAS2 (which will reformat it), copy data from D1 in NAS1 to D2 in NAS2, and move D1 to NAS2 (which will reformat it)?

Without a hardware failure, I don't see how this could lose any data but I'm afraid that I'm missing something. I don't have the space to follow claykin's recommendation without doing it in several pieces, but I will do it that way if it decreases the chance of catastrophe.

 

[teknojnky]

it should work fine, as you already seem to be aware the biggest issue is a drive failure during the transfer, especially the source drive.

Since neither device would be redundant, your exposing your data to potential loss, but the risk is really no different than any other non-redundant storage.

You can either accept the risk, or ensure your important data is backed up elsewhere in case of failure.

It should go without saying, that raid is never a substitute for backups anyway. If there is only one copy of the data, you can lose it any number of ways (fire/flood/theft/accidental user deletion/etc).

 

[thiggins]

The real question here is where is your NAS backup? RAID is not a substitute for backup.

If you're sensing a reluctance of people to say "sure, go ahead, it'll work", you're correct. Anyone who has used RAID systems for long enough knows that doing anything unusual like you're proposing has a high probability of biting you in the butt.

That said, what you propose will probably work. But running any RAID array in degraded mode is always a risk. But RAID 1 is the least risky of all since the drives are simply mirrored.

One final word: Backup.

 

[MrPandy]

The files also exist in the original video DVDs and audio CDs that I ripped them from, and data DVD backups of my digital photos, so it's not the end of the world if everything crashes and burns. The whole RAID thing is probably overkill for my situation, but drives are cheap, the feature came with the NAS, configuring is easy, and I'd hate to redo all of it if a disk failed in daily use.

Once I gather all the parts, I'll give it a go and report back with the embarrassing or triumphant results. Thanks again to all.