extra hdd and raid change without formatting?

[Nicop]

Hello, I have a TS 412 with a Seagate 3 TB drive.
Now I want to add a hard disks. And later more.

Can it do this without any problem or should i first backup the data?

Same question about the raid adapt, can I customize 4 discs to raid 5 ? or is everything being formatted when change from raid 0 to raid 5?

grt Nico

[doktornotor]

I would suggest to read the fine manual

[Don]

I'm confused and you have not made yourself clear.

Do you have one drive now and you are adding a second drive? How will you configure the drives?

You cannot migrate from raid 0 to raid 1,5, 10, or anyting else.

Please read the on-line manual tht explains what you can do and what you can't do.

[pwilson]

Hello, I have a TS 412 with a Seagate 3 TB drive.
Now I want to add a hard disks. And later more.

Can it do this without any problem or should i first backup the data?

Same question about the raid adapt, can I customize 4 discs to raid 5 ? or is everything being formatted when change from raid 0 to raid 5?

I would suggest to read the fine manual

If you follow the instructions in the RAID Management section of the QNAP Turbo NAS User Manual, as recommended by "doktornotor", you will discover that QNAP does NOT support Online RAID Level Migration from RAID0. (Mostly due to the fact, that RAID0 is not RAID; RAID0 provides no Redundancy whatsoever).

RAID0 is very risky! When a drive "fails" under RAID0 you will loose all your data on all of your drives.

If you want to Use Online RAID Capacity Expansion and RAID Level Migration together you need to start with a supported RAID level. You can indeed add additional drives to an existing RAID array to expand capacity.

SingleDrive: 1 * 3 TB = 2.7 TB of non-redundant storage.
RAID1: 2 * 3TB = 2.7 TB of redundant storage.
RAID5: 3 * 3TB = 5.4 TB of redundant storage.
RAID5: 4 * 3TB = 8.1 TB of redundant storage.

When a drive fails under RAID1/RAID5/RAID6/RAID10, you simply follow the instructions in QNAP Tutorial: Hot-swapping the hard drives when the RAID crashes, which typically will get you up and running without data loss. When a drive fails under SingleDrive you loose all your data on the failed drive. When a Drive fails under JBOD or RAID0 you loose all your data on all of your drives.

If you value your data, and want to protect that data, you will want to purchase a second 3TB drive, and use Online RAID Level Migration to migrate from your existing risky SingleDrive to RAID1 data protection. You "paid" for RAID, when you bought your NAS, why aren't you using it? Drives are easy to replace, but data isn't.

If you choose to stay with SingleDrive, I would suggest that you implement a very strict backup regime in order to protect your data from drive failure. Please consider migrating to RAID1/RAID5/RAID6/RAID10 protection. SingleDrive is a very risky configuration, as not only is all your data stored on a single drive, but your NAS configuration is also only stored on the SingleDrive. When it fails under SingleDrive, you will not only lose all your data, you will also loose your NAS configuration, which will require starting over from scratch with a replacement drive. Very Risky!

[Nicop]

Thanks all!
So if I understand it correctly,
I have to format my current hard drive, then put it in raid 1.
I can add in stages hard disc 2,3 and 4
and if I have 4 disks i can go without problems migrating to RAID 5? And without data loss go from raid 1 to 5? Or should i migrate with empty discs?

[Don]

No you don't understand it correctly. Please read the manual.

[pwilson]

Thanks all!
So if I understand it correctly,
I have to format my current hard drive, then put it in raid 1.
I can add in stages hard disc 2,3 and 4
and if I have 4 disks i can go without problems migrating to RAID 5? And without data loss go from raid 1 to 5? Or should i migrate with empty discs?

Please review QNAP Tutorial: Online RAID Level Migration as previously recommended. There is no need to format your present drive at all, you can migrate it.

[Nicop]

Thanks pwilson,

i read it but was confused because Don said:

You cannot migrate from raid 0 to raid 1,5, 10, or anyting else.

so if i understand it correctly now, ik can put in the new drives and migrate all the drives to raid 5 without data loss?

[P3R]

Hello, I have a TS 412 with a Seagate 3 TB drive.

If it is only a single disk it must be configured as a single disk volume. A single disk volume can be migrated into RAID 1, RAID 5, RAID 6 or RAID 10 as explained in the documentation.

Now I want to add a hard disks.

When having a single disk volume (as you said above) and adding one (1) other disk of equal or larger size you can migrate into RAID 1 as explained in the documentation.

And later more.

When having a RAID 1 volume and adding one or more disk of equal or larger size you can migrate into RAID 5, RAID 6 or RAID 10 as explained in the documentation.

Can it do this without any problem or should i first backup the data?

When doing the above mentioned or any other supported RAID migration/expansion operation described in the documentation, it should retain your data. That said, anything can go wrong at any time so you should always have a complete backup of all data.

Same question about the raid adapt, can I customize 4 discs to raid 5 ?

Here you suddenly start to talk about a totally different(?) scenario and confuses everyone. I have no idea what you mean here. I can't see this in any way being related to the first part of this post. If you think it is, you have to explain better what exactly it is you have and what you want to do.

or is everything being formatted when change from raid 0 to raid 5?

This question by itself describe an impossible migration path and the multiple negative answers here in the thread are very correct. I can't see this in any way being related to the first part of this post. If you think it is, you have to explain better what you have and what exactly it is you want to do.

When the questions asked are unclear, the answers will very likely feel confusing.

[pwilson]

Thanks pwilson,

i read it but was confused because Don said:

You cannot migrate from raid 0 to raid 1,5, 10, or anyting else.

so if i understand it correctly now, ik can put in the new drives and migrate all the drives to raid 5 without data loss?

What is to be confused about. You can NOT migrate from RAID0 to RAID5. We've explained this several times. Your present drive is setup as SingleDrive, and that can be migrated to RAID1/RAID5/RAID6/RAID10.

Please review QNAP Tutorial: Online RAID Level Migration as previously recommended several times in this thread by several people. There is no need to format your present drive at all, you can migrate it.

If you aren't going to follow the advice that is provided, what is the point of asking for advice in the first place. Have you actually read any of the documents recommeneded. Doing so will give you QNAP's advice, not just ours. If you'd actually read the documents cited, you would not be confused about it at all.

RAID0 is extremely risky, and is a dead end street. Once you use RAID0, your only upgrade path is to backup, wipe, create new RAID0, and restore data. This is slow, and a lot of work, which will only give you yet another extemely risky configuration.

Migrate from SingleDisk to RAID, and further migrations/expansions are easy.




Click on this image to get to the QNAP Tutorial: Online RAID Level Migration.