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[mvejvoda]

I currently have two WD 1 TB Caviar Black drives in Raid 1 config model: WD1001FALS-00J7B

I am running out of space and want to upgrade to two WD 2 TB Caviar Black drives model: WD2002FAEX

What is the best approach to do this upgrade (I'm on firmware 1.10 latest beta from April 6, 2011)?

Thanks

[dosborne]

There are numerous ways to accomplish this, but the best, safest and most reliable way is to copy the data off the 1TB drives to another location, install the new 2TB drives and copy the data back. THis isn't the fastest way, but that's not what you asked for

[mvejvoda]

Ok I copied from the 1 TB to the 2 TB drive (the 2 TB drives work fine).

Now my problem is when i place the second drive into the 2nd bay the web interface keeps prompting me to pick the setup for the drives (standard raid etc), when i press skip I can mount the and access all my files just fine. How do i get the Raid working again on both drives.. the status screen says degraded and shows both drives and each time i enter the web interface it repeatedly asks for the drive config.

Both 2 TB drives were formatted as Raid 1 before I copied the data onto them from the 1 TB drive ( i used a live CD to mount and copy the data from the 1 TB raid to the 2 TB raid).

Thanks

[D-Link Multimedia]

If it recognizes one disk as a 'degraded' raid and it shows all your data, take the second disk and remove all the partitions and put it in the NAS. The nas should format the new drive as the Raid 1 partition and automatically start syncing the data.

[mvejvoda]

Yes it shows as degraded with only the 1 drive that has data on it and I can access the files perfectly. Once this whole process is complete i will document exactly what i did here for the benefit of others. Before trying to wipe the 2nd drive (both new drives were formatted as raid 1 in the dns323 before i copied data from one of the old 1 TB drives to one of the newly formatted 2 TB drives) I will try clicking the 'manual rebuild' button in the raid config area and see if it makes everything happy and back to normal. IF that fails then I will wipe the 2nd drive's Raid partitions and pop it back in and see what happens (though auto rebuild is turned off so i think i'd have to do manual rebuild anyways).

*update:

Looks like I had to delete the partitions on the second raid drive (the 2nd 2 TB drive) because even after a manual rebuild (which in fact it DID copy the files to the 2nd drive, i checked) however when restarting the NAS it continues to prompt for reformatting and setting the drive type. Now I deleted all partions on the 2nd 2 TB drive, plugged it in and started up the NAS again and it prompted differently this time stating it would format the new drive and start synching RAID data. In fact it DID format the 2nd drive but it DID NOT synch data (I had the setting set to manually rebuild and looks like it did not warn me that i have to manually rebuild). Now I clicked on manual rebuild and will report back when that is done to give the final verdict (I assume success this time).

[mvejvoda]

Ok everything worked successfully and I am back up and running 100%. The following are the steps I took to upgrade from my Western Digital WD1001FALS 1 TB drives configured as Raid 1 to newer WD2002FAEX 2 TB drives (and keep the Raid 1).

#1. Power Down and remove all original drives from the DNS323
#2. Place the new 2 TB drives in the dns323 and power up the NAS.
#3. Enter the web interface for the NAS and select RAID 1 when it prompts you to format the drives
#4. When the format is complete power down the NAS and remove the new drives.
#5. Using and computer with two available SATA ports, connect one original drive (one of the 1TB drive drives containing original data) and one of the newly formatted new drives and boot up the computer uisng a Linux Live CD (I used UBuntu 10.10 64 bit Installer CD selecting try using Ubuntu option)
#6. Open GParted (Under Administration->GParted) and write down the device information of both newly connected drives (the old 1 TB and the new 2 TB), for example in my case the old 1 TB drive had partitions on sda2 and the new 2 TB drive was sdb2 (the largest partition on both represents the partition containing the actual data) and write down the partition format (example ext2)
#7. Open a terminal (Applications->Terminal) and type the following commands to mount both drives:

sudo mkdir /media/dlinkt1
sudo mount -t ext2 /dev/sda2 /media/dlinkt1
sudo mkdir /media/dlinkt2
sudo mount -t ext2 /dev/sdb2 /media/dlinkt2

Now both the old and drive are accessible in the 'Places' Menu in UBuntu and also by looking in /media/dlink1 (old original data) and /media/dlinkt2 the new empty drive that we will copy to.

#8. Issue the following command to copy data from the old to the new drive:

cp -pnr /media/dlinkt1 /media/dlinkt2

#9. When the copy is finished power down the computer, disconnect both drives.
#10. Connect the 2nd 2 TB drive that was also newly formatted in step #3 to the same computer used in step #5 and boot up using the same Live Linux CD and select try using Ubutnu, open GPArted again and delete all of the partitions on this drive and then save the blanked out partition table and shutdown and remove the drive.
#11. Place both 2 TB drives in the DNS323 NAS and power it up.
#12. Enter the web interface of the NAS and select Next when it asks you to reformat the empty 2nd 2 TB drive. When the format is complete, if you see the status of degraded in the status screen, goto the RAID config screen and select Manual Rebuild and when that is complete you are finished.