Restoring Data to Fresh install - can I use the 4th spare bay?

[hockeyrink]

• Model TS451 Pro
• QTS 5.0.1.2194
• RAID 5 3x8TB Ironwolf

I was victim of the "cache drive" debacle that eventually lead to my RAID-5 array needing to be re-initialized from scratch. Fortunately, I've got a comprehensive backup, and my dataset is small enough that I've got a copy on a spare 8TB drive.

Can I drop this drive into the "hot-spare" #4 slot, mount it, and copy it to the RAID-5 array?

I did some digging, and the only comments I found semi-relevant was that

no, the Qnap will want to re-initialize the fresh drive before it can use it.

Before I take an old 500GB drive and try this out myself (before risking the 8TB unit) I was wondering if this is still the case or if anybody else can confirm this before I head into the office this week?

If it's a GUI limitation, could I login to the root ssh terminal, manually mount it, then RSYNC it over to the array. It sure would be faster than a 1GB network. It should be ~20% faster than a USB3 external HDD mount too, no?

[dolbyman]

You founnd the correct info..do not place drives with data in the NAS bays..just attach them via USB and a dock

[hockeyrink]

After this post, tripped over this post that was describing almost exactly what I wanted to do, which is to load an EXT4 (or ntfs) volume into a spare bay and make it available either internally to the QNAP or optionally through to the whole network.

I confirmed it with a spare HD first, and am now presently rsyncing ~6TB of data from a 8TB drive inserted to slot-4 to the RAID-5 array. Key take-away is to NOT initialize the HD using the QNAP GUI and go with pretty standard linux mounting procedures through the command line.

I'm sure I could have just went as originally planned to use an external dock & USB3, but this should be a bit faster, and now I've got a technique to optionally add not-Qnap HDs to the device internally either permanently or temporarily. Plus, I wanted to use rsync over the QNAP native copying method as I'm much more comfortable with knowing the methods & results from rsync (which again, could have been done thru USB as well).

[dolbyman]

Glad that works for you, but fiddling it together like this will NOT create the needed hidden system partitions on that drive(if you want to keep that drive later). And no tears if a firmware update or other change QNAP does blows it all up (wouldn't be the first time, again if you want to keep that drive in there)

An external USB to SATA bridge adapter should work with speeds exceeding single drive speed anyways, so nothing really gained here in terms of speed.

[Gaudi]

Complementing dolbyman comments, NAS SATA backplane connectors are not meant for frequent connection/disconnection and f drives could wear down it resulting in an early failure.

Be aware that such spares are not easily obtainable, and you may need to send the unit to repair.

Regards