Swap HDD's between TS-231P to TS-251A NAS Units

[anger3]

Hi, looking for some advice. I am planning on swapping 2 x 6TB HDDs from a TS-231P NAS into a TS-251A (the TS-231P will receive 2 x 4TB HDDs that are currently in the TS-251A) - I would like the TS-251A NAS to have the larger HDD capacity to use for Lightroom file storage. Both NAS units are currently set up as RAID1.

I understand I can literally move the drives from the TS-231P straight into the TS-251A and it will keep the data intact based on the QNAP compatibility list on their website (https://www.qnap.com.cn/en-us/nas-migra ... on=ts-251a). However, I can not do the reverse, place the TS-251A drives (2 X 4TB HDD's) into the TS-231P NAS, they will need to be re-formatted.

If I do move the 2 x 6TB HDDs from the TS-231P NAS into the TS-251A NAS how likely is am I to have issues, in other words is it a reasonably safe process?

Seeing that I do not currently have a lot of data on ether NAS I assume the safer bet would be move the data from both NAS units onto an external drive, swap the drives between the TS-251A & TS-231P, units re-format the drives and re-load the data on the respective NAS units. Interested to understand what is best practice, thanks.

[dolbyman]

if migration is not supported you would probably get an error message or a non working system (the disks also contain the NAS OS...that is why cross swapping between architectures is sometimes unsupported)

make sure you have external backups of all data you do not want to lose (raid is not a backup)

[anger3]

Sure, thanks for the response. Sounds like the best way may be to set up both NAS units as fresh again from the start once I have the data back up on a external drive.

I assume I can just transfer the data off of each NAS onto an external HDD and not worry about any type of encryption?