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[alembic]

I've got two DNS-323 boxes. Both are RAID1 mode. One has a pair of 2TB drives, the other a pair of 1TB drives.

My goal is to have both boxes set to STANDARD mode with two separate drives. I plan to relocate one box off-site and set up rsync to perform scheduled incremental backups.

Based on the above, I'm thinking these are the steps I need to take:

- power down both boxes.

- remove the 1 TB drive in the left bay from box B.

- remove a 2TB drive from box A and insert into box B.

- power up box B and reformat both drives in STANDARD mode.

- power up box A, telnet into it and copy data from the remaining 2TB drive to the newly formatted 2TB drive in box B.

- power down both boxes.

- remove the 2TB drive from box A.

- insert the other 1TB drive and power up box A.

- telnet into box A and copy data from the 1TB drive to the newly formatted 1TB drive in box B. Box B is done.

- power down box A.

- insert the other 2TB drive into box A and reformat both drives in STANDARD mode.

- telnet into box B and copy data from both drives to the corresponding drives in box A.

Assuming I don't want to buy an external drive enclosure to do this, does this sound about right? Or have I missed something that could make it easier? Thanks!

[dosborne]

I believe it is even easier......

Remove the secondary drive (I alway forget which it is....the LEFT I *THINK*)
Reformat the remaining drive as a single volume (non-RAID)
Insert the secondary drive

Your data should be available on Volume_2

If you get the RAID rebuild prompt, then reverse the drives.

Of course you want to ensure you have any critical data backed up elsewhere but as I recall this is how I broke the mirroring when I had it.

[fordem]

It doesn't matter which drive you pull - just pull any drive, format the remaining one and then reinstall the drive that was removed - and as dosborne has pointed out, even though no data loss is expected, making a backup is always a safe thing to do.

[alembic]

Thanks for your replies.

So I would perform the above on both boxes, then swap a 2TB drive from box A for a 1TB drive from box B. That would be give me identical 2TB/1TB configurations on both boxes.

My procedure would have entailed four disk copy procedures while dosborne's method needs only two! Plus I don't have to set up ssh keys to set up rsync to copy files between boxes. And I'd have to assume cp between two internal drives is a lot faster than rsync from two separate boxes through the network (though I have jumbo frames enabled).

On each box, I plan to duplicate drives using this command:

# cp -r /mnt/HD_a2/* /mnt/HD_b2/

One thing I'm not sure about is the actual duplication of drive data. I've installed fun_plug, set up samba shares, etc. Will the above command also copy these tweaks or are they stored external to the file system covered by the above command (e.g. in non-volatile memory)?

[alembic]

I'm trying to format one of the drives and I get this message when the progress bar is 1% done:

Hard Drive(s) Formatting Failure. (Error Code:107)

When I do a disk scan from the web interface, it tells me that it failed. But rebooting the NAS from that single drive, I can ssh into it and all appears normal.

Anyway to tweak the drive so that it can be reformatted?

[alembic]

After I disabled fun_plug I was able to reformat the drive:

http://forums.dlink.com/index.php?topic=14784.msg86460#msg86460

Currently copying data over to the newly formatted drive...