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[PteJack]

Hello everyone,
This is the second drive upgrade to this DNS-323. (please view the DNS-323 status report below after reading questions)

The first was the upgrade from 2x500GB WD5000AAKS Caviars (originally in Standard Format) to 2x1TB Seagate ST31000524AS Barracudas (Raid1)

To perform the upgrade, I copied all files from the WDs to a computer HD then transferred them all back to the DNS-323 after I changed out the 2 drives to the 1TB Barracudas formatted to RAID1.  Hours and Hours of work!!!!

Now I want to change up to Seagate ST2000DL003 2TB drives in Raid1 .

I pulled out the right 1TB drive and inserted a 2TB Drive and allowed the RAID1 to Auto-Rebuild completely.  It appeared to work, I found 2 volumes available after the rebuild completed; a 1TB RAID1 and the other a 1TB JBOD. Both volumes were accessible and I could all the old files from the original raid1 partition and I could add new folders or files to the JBOD partition.

I swapped out the other 1TB drive from the left bay and again I enabled the auto-rebuild.

If you look at the status report from the DNS-323, I can see that the device recognizes both drives as ST2000DL003s but now I can only see the Raid1 1TB (volume one) partition.  It appears like I only have 2x1TB drives installed in RAID01 config.

I understand that the rebuild has not finished yet, but I am wondering why the RAID1 is only reporting 1TB?? (maybe the other 2TBs will show up as JBOD partitions, or will not be seen again after the rebuild is complete; or is the DNS-323 smart enough to recognise the additional 2TB as wanting to be included in the Raid1 configuration and will assign it after the rebuild completion?)

I am trying to dedicate 100% of the drives to RAID1 configuration without a JBOD partition.

OR

Am I going to have to do what I did the first time around, copy everything to a stand-alone drive and then copy it back to the DNS-323 after swapping and formatting the news drives to Raid1.   

Comments would be appreciated... Thanks.

Pte Jack

(Status Report)
 
Total Drive(s):  2
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Volume Name:  Volume_1
Volume Type:  RAID 1
Sync Time Remaining:  161.5 minute(s)
Total Hard Drive Capacity:  981858 MB
Used Space:  779161 MB
Unused Space:  202697 MB
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
PHYSICAL DISK INFO :
Slot Vendor Model Serial Number Size
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Right Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT1 6YD0FX1T 2000 G 
Left Seagate ST2000DL003-9VT1 6YD0ECA1 2000 G 

[dosborne]

This gets asked all the time and there are many threads on it.

You have 1TB raid because it does not automatically increase the size. You mirrored a 1TB partition therefore you have 1TB of Raid 1 and the remainder available as another volume.

The easiest way to perform the upgrade (without modifying the unit with FFP) is to use a USB enclosure and a windows linux driver to mount the original drive for reading and format and install the new drives as a 2TB Raid (or whatever you want). Then copy the files from the PC to the NAS.

[PteJack]

Thank you dosborne for your quick reply. 

I tried reading through some of those threads in order to find an answer before posting, but they didn't seem to go far enough to answer my questions.

I also attempted to do as you suggested using DiskInternals Linux Reader 2.0 and a NexStar Universal Storage Adapter. I can see the Linux partitions but cannot access the files on the original 1TB drives.  I am wondering if this is because the of the RAID1 (ext3) settings I used when I originally formatted the drives in the DNS-323.

DiskInternals identifies the drive as Physical 24AS but the program errors out when I try to access it.  In My Computer of the program, I see 4 Linux partitions; Empty Volume 5 (517mb), Empty Volume 6 (929GB), Empty Volume 7 (1.7GB) and Linux native Volume1 (502MB). When I click on the Empty Volumes the program errors out (and I really think I need to access the Empty volume 6 to get at my files.) The Native partition has a few folders and files behind it, but not the main data I'm trying to access.

When I upgraded from the 500GB to the 1TBs I used the method you suggested to get the files off of the 500s to the harddrive. Again the 500s were formatted in the DNS-323 as standard drives not RAID1. DiskInternals had no problem accessing those files. 

Now as for the 1TBs, do you know if I have to have both drives attached to the computer I am using (because of the Raid1 formatting) in order to access the files?

Again... Thanks for your response.

Pte Jack

[dosborne]

Driver info: http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=38517.0

Both drives are (or should be) identical so it is onlynecessary to mount one of them.

[PteJack]

Thanks again, dosborne.  It is great to have possitive feedback to questions like this to learn from.

I followed the link you provided and found the Ext viewing freeware ext2explore mentioned in the thread. I attached one of the 1TB drives to the computer I was using and same problem, the linux partitions could not be seen by the program??? I took the drive to another computer, re-ran the program and poof, there they were; all visible and accessible!! I must have the other machine set up differently somewhere or it may be the USB HUB I used that caused the problem on the original computer. 

Unfortunately, by the time I got this to work, I had already removed the 2TBs from the unit and slapped one of the 1TBs back into the DNS-323 and had began copying files to one of my other boxes. (Oh well, ALWAYS GOOD TO HAVE AN EXTRA BACKUP or 2, JUST IN CASE!!)

As for the mirroring of the image after the auto-rebuild from the 1TB to the 2TB drive, you were correct (as I suspected you would be.) The image on the 2TB I had used in the first rebuild became an exact duplicate of the 1TB drive. 

The DNS-323 did give me the option of erasing everything and to re-format the drives to 2TB Raid or to assign the unused room of 1 drive into a JBOD when the 2nd auto-rebuild completed.

The unit could not see the unused portion of the 1st 2TB drive and would not allow me to create a 2nd raided partition. The only selectable option was JBOD.

I tried to create the JBOD partition but after the format the Raid1 partition disappeared and out of the 4TBs in the unit, I only had the 1TB JBOD partition on the drive in the left slot for use (This became native volume 1.) The DNS could not see the Raid partition between the drives I had created in the 2nd rebuild or the other unused portion of the first 2TB drive in the right slot. (Gawd, I love computers.)

So, I now have a 1 and half day task of allowing the DNS to finish feeding files to the computer and another day and a half of pushing them back to the 2TB Raid1 config.

It would be nice to have a function or an utility built into the firmware that would allow for easier upgrading of drives. Can you pull any strings?

Again, thanks for the great input. 

Pte Jack   

[dosborne]

Can I pull any string? No

I'm a simple user such as yourself. I do not work for DLink. I agree it would be a great addition to the functionality of the unit. Something similar to the Windows Partition Magic program that allows you to resize partitions.

In any case, you now have multiple backups (at least for a while) and it is best to copy the files the slow way as it lays them out cleanly on the drives. The drawback is of course the slow copy process.

Cheers.

[Flamingfarts]

i did not tested it yet but if i need to increase the size of the hard drives this is my plan to get faster copying times :

Create a virtual machine on my PC and install a Linux OS or even this http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
pop the drive from the NAS and connect it directly on my PC with the sata cable ( no USB enclosure ).
firing up the Virtual linux machine and copy my files and then to the new drive ....

[PteJack]

Great suggestion Flamingfarts, unfortunately I only have a 1GB drive in the computer I'm using for this transfer and I think I'm only going to have about 300MB left when this transfer finishes. 

I would have formatted one of the 1TB drives and plugged it in a created a dualboot box, but I don't like playing with or deleting data until I get it securely into one place and it is verified as good.  I lost a lot of pictures, files and memorabilia when my worldbook fried out a 500GB drive and couldn't recover anything from it.

As for dual boots through a VirtMachine, I'm not quite there yet. 

If I had found my problem with the other machine earlier and waited to start the transfer from the EXT2Explorer or DiskInternals programs, I could have plugged the drive into an empty SATA slot on the board and the transfer would have been faster than doing it through the NAS or an USB Enclosure.

Pte Jack

Good Luck

[ivan]

i did not tested it yet but if i need to increase the size of the hard drives this is my plan to get faster copying times :

Create a virtual machine on my PC and install a Linux OS or even this http://www.pendrivelinux.com/
pop the drive from the NAS and connect it directly on my PC with the sata cable ( no USB enclosure ).
firing up the Virtual linux machine and copy my files and then to the new drive ....

You would be better advised to get a love Linux CD and use that rather than a VM.  You will always have an overhead when using a VM and there is always the possibility that it will be slower depending on how the hardware is virtualised.

[Flamingfarts]

you have a point ,but in my case my Hexacore 4Ghz CPU can chew some VM easily

[PteJack]

As a side note, I found the reason why I could not read the drive using EXT2Explorer on my other machine. The USB to ATA/ATAPI Bridge driver did not load when I plugged in the USB Cable connected to the Drive.  I had a compatability problem with another USB card reading Device that was already plugged into the Computer. Once I removed the card reader and plugged the drive back in, the drive was accessible through EXT2Explorer (Must run the program as an administrator in Windows 7 to see the drive.)

Again, thanks for all the input everyone, I consider this thread resolved and closed.

Pte Jack

[ivan]

you have a point ,but in my case my Hexacore 4Ghz CPU can chew some VM easily

The big question is, how well is the VM supported on your hardware?  I've seen several VMs where there has been a network problem because the virtual NIC didn't communicate with the real NIC very well.  I have also seen a VM only talking to virtual disks unless they were connected by USB.