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The Graveyard - Products No Longer Supported => D-Link Storage => DNS-323 => Topic started by: Jarett on October 05, 2009, 04:43:26 PM

Title: moving to larger HD
Post by: Jarett on October 05, 2009, 04:43:26 PM

I currently have 2 500GB drives set as RAID1.  I would like to go to larger drives.  Is it possible to replace the drives one at a time with larger ones, and let 1 2TB drive sync with the 500GB drive, and then put in the 2nd 2TB drive, or will the size difference mess up the RAID1 setting?

Title: Re: moving to larger HD
Post by: D-Link Multimedia on October 05, 2009, 05:45:54 PM

Unfortunately we do not have a form of raid migration for larger hard drives. Your best bet would be to copy the data off onto your PC (or format one of you RAID drives in your pc), copy the data off and then replace the 500's with the two 2 TB drives. Once configured as your new raid you can copy all the data back and it will then be raided across both drives. Seems about the same amount of effort as your original described approach.

Title: Re: moving to larger HD
Post by: swallac2 on October 13, 2009, 06:54:42 PM

So that means that I can't:

break the mirror,
change one drive,
format it,
copy the data from the remaining drive to the new drive,
replace the remaining drive,
and  re-mirror the two new drives?

The reason that I was looking to do it this way is because I don't have enough space on any of my PC's to just migrate the data off and back on again.  At the same time, I don't want to loose my data.

Title: Re: moving to larger HD
Post by: mig on October 14, 2009, 10:57:06 AM

Quote from: swallac2 on October 13, 2009, 06:54:42 PM

At the same time, I don't want to loose my data.

The only way to make sure you don't loose any data is to backup the data.

Your technique sounds good, but if something goes wrong you will need a backup
to guarantee you data is not lost.

If you have a winXP computer and you can successfully mount one drive
from the current RAID1, using an EXT fs driver (www.fs-driver.com ro http://sourceforge.net/projects/ext2fsd/) for read only access. Or boot your computer with a Linux live CD and
mount the drive read only.

You could pull both old drive and setup both new drives as
RAID1 in the DNS-323, then copy the data from one of the old RAID1 drive, mounted to winXP
(w/EXT fs driver) to the DNS-323.

Either technique, I would make a backup, just in case something goes wrong.
see: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=8673.0 for a example of something
unforseen going wrong  :o