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[rknopf]

Having various issues with my older DNS-321.  Is there any way to move the disks from it to my spare cabinet or will it insist on formatting the drives once it powers up?  Since I have RAID1 could I move only one without breaking the mirror?

Simpler version of the question: will removing and reinserting a disk into the same cabinet/slot force a reformat? 

Roger

[gunrunnerjohn]

It's been said here that you can, so it may indeed be possible.  I think I'd reset the new box to factory defaults before sticking in the disk(s).

I tried moving a pair of RAID-1 disks from a DNS-323 to a DNS-321, that did not work.  However, I believe if you have the same model, you may have better luck.

[JoeSchmuck]

Can you pull off the data from the drives before you connect it to the new NAS?  If the old NAS is giving you trouble you could attach the drive to your computer via either external USB adapter or plugging it in and booting Knoppix to access the data.  The latest version supports EXT3 format.  I had a friend access my drive since he's familiar with Linux and he said it was automatically mounted but he could not write to it without a few commands but I only wanted to read from it anyway.  The NTFS internal drive was mounted normally so he could copy data of the NAS drive directly to the NTFS drive.

Yes, you can remove one drive and it will not break the mirror, or that was my experience on my NAS running 1.03 version firmware.  If you alter the disk it may need to be rebuilt but you would still retain your data from the drive you never pulled.  I think it's a minor risk but if you don't need to put that drive back in, leave it out if you're in doubt.  If you can, backup your data to another drive before moving the drive over.

Simpler Answer: No, not on the same NAS.

Last thought...  If you have another 321 NAS box, backup the configuration file of the old NAS, with your new (backup) NAS load the configuration file, pull one of your RAID 1 drives out, stick it into the new NAS box.  If it works, great, if not reformat the new NAS drive and copy the data from the old NAS to the new NAS, verify your data is in-tact, reformat the old NAS drive, pull the old NAS drive and install into the new NAS, reformat if asked (make sure it's the correct drive), and make it a RAID 1.

Backup your data if possible!

Just a thought.

-Joe

[Ryder]

Just to add to Joe's last thought, the obvious, make sure that the new NAS is running the same firmware version as the old one. You could update it before any drives are in it, then go with exactly what Joe said. That's the way I did it 1-2 times for clients and it worked well for me each time.

Good "last thought" Joe!