I currently have a TS-464 with 3, 6GB Seagate drives configured as Raid 5, and want to migrate the system to 2 12GB drives configured as Raid 1. Since there is a single, unused drive bay, I am wondering if there is a way to have at least one 12GB drive installed while the existing drives are in place to make migrating data easier.
Is there a recommended way to do this type of thing?
You can convert a single disk to RAID1 later, but if the RAID5 is also your system volume, you will lose all your apps.
I know it hurts financially but a system volume should be installed on SSDs (apps load much faster that way) and a system volume should be redundant (so two disks in RAID1)
easiest would be to start the NAS from scratch with the correct config and restore your files from backups
Thanks. My initial thought was just just pull the old drives out, insert the new ones, restore from backup. I thought being able to move the files from the old volume to the other would be faster.
Wouldn’t I lose all my apps if I remove the existing drives, restore onto to the two new drives?
Also, is it possible to back up the installed apps? I’ve been backing up my personal files as well as system settings.
You cannot backup or restore apps, hence my advice given.
And restoring apps is the easy part. If you use apps like Note Station and don’t export your notes before redoing your NAS, they will be lost forever. Some thing with Containers and VMs.
Regarding your recommendation of the system on SSD. First, an embarrassing confession. I installed SINGLE WD Red NVMe SSD as a cache. After 3 years, it failed while on a multi-month trip where I was using Tailscale to VPN in so I could watch Netflix. It was a real drag. I learned my lesson!
First, if I were to install the SSD, is it possible to move the existing system install onto the SSD? If so, that could simplify things as I could migrate over in stages. If not, it doesn’t seem to help with this migration problem. Btw, does this make the NAS quieter? That would be a big plus!
Assuming this would be a good thing to do, any recommendation on brands and size? I don’t have many apps and my .qpkg folder seems to be 5.2GB.
Thank you. it turns out that I don’t have that many apps installed. Mainly Emby, Plex and Tailscale. I don’t use NoteStation and haven’t used any containers or VMs.
Single SSD is a bad idea (as you discovered)
You cannot move the system, no.
Due to md9 and md13, all internal disks will still be loud.
I would think that there would be less disk activity with having the system volume be ssd. Is that not correct?
Also, if I have an existing running system - either with the current drives or the new ones migrated over, and I then configure the 2 SSD as the system volume, with the drives removed. If I then insert the drives, will it work? Or do I need to re-format and copy the data all over again.
I don’t have the SSD yet, but do have the new drives. Wondering if I should wait before doing any migration.
Thanks for your help!
The old disks contain your old system volume, so you need to erase the old disks to clear out the system volume. And you have to have the SSDs (I am confused that you only ever mention one, even after that failure story a few posts up) installed to create the system volume.
Unless you hammer your system volume with constant activity (Plex server, QuMagie, Containers, etc) you will not hear a big difference, as all disks will be constantly written to for logs,etc)
Also “System Volume” does not equal “Operating System Volume.” The OS is spread across all drives. System Volume is simply where your default folders are located, where apps are installed by default and where some of the internal QNAP databases are located.
Sorry… when I said “the SSD”, I meant “the 2 SSD configured as Raid 1”. I’ve learned my lesson!
You can use a raid5 in degraded mode (with one drive missing). I guess you could fail one drive. this would allow you to remove the drive and use the 4th slot plus the now free slot to create your raid1. Then move everything from the degraded raid5 to your new raid1.
Thank you! I think it might even be simpler. What I will try to do is to insert one of the two new drives into the 4th slot and create a non-system volume, as there is already a system volume. I can then copy all of the data from the current system volume. I will then remove all of the drives, insert the 2 SSD drives, create a system volume, and then insert the single drive and get it working with the new SSD system volume. Then, I can insert the 2nd disk and migrate the first disk to a RAID 1 with the 2nd.
I will have everything backed up so if it doesn’t work, I can re-do starting both the SSD and the new Drives from scratch.
I have finished the migration and so wanted to share my experience. First, when I went to do it, I was searching in the QNAP Knowledge Base and it seems like they must have read this thread and created a FAQ on it, because it was last edited on June 10, which was a few days after my last post. It describes the exact scenario, including my NAS model and all disk sizes!
I basically followed these steps. It was quite simple, but there were a few details left out that I had to figure out. In a nutshell, what I did was.
Insert one of my 2 new disks and created a new Storage Pool (SP 2) with a new Volume (V2) as a single disk.
I copied all data from my old/current System Volume to V2.
I did this by creating an HBS Sync Job. This maintained all permissions and since it took many hours to run, allowed me to do it again later prior to removing the old disks* This was MUCH faster than restoring from Backups as those are either on USB drives or a cloud based service.
One complication is that you need to create Shared Folders on the new Volume and they have to be named differently than the ones on the original Volume. I opted to name the same with 2 appended (i.e. Media2, homes2). I Google AI summary told me to rename the old ones with “old” appended, but you can’t rename homes.
I migrated all apps to the new Volume by right clicking and choosing “Migrate”. There were a few apps that didn’t support this and those I had to reinstall. It wasn’t a big deal.
The Step 4 in the FAQ had me delete the old storage pool prior to removing the drives. I was nervous about this because I believe it would erase the disks. I opted to detach them and then remove them.
With the old disks removed, I restored Default Shared Folders in the Control Panel, which created a new “homes” folder. I then dragged and dropped the non-admin folders from homes2 to homes. I also had to remove all of the original shared folders (i.e. Media) that pointed to the now removed original drives, and then removed the 2 from all shares (Media2 to Media).
I shut down, moved the drive from slot 4 to one and rebooted. Once booted, I inserted the 2nd drive, and Migrated SP2 from single disk to Raid 1.
After everything was done, I verified everything was working. I did have to go into a few apps like Emby and Plex and update the Library folders. While they did Migrate, they did not automatically change the mapping of their Libraries.
Overall, this went really well and I would recommend it for others doing a similar migration. Much preferable, I think, to doing a restore from backup. The system seems quite a bit faster and a bit quieter.
@dolbyman - I did consider your advise of putting the system volume on an SSD. I sent the failed 1TB WD Red SN700 back to Sandisk and they gave me a replacement under warranty. I also purchased the 2nd one from Amazon. Two factors led me away from doing this and just using the new hard drives.
The SSD failure is the only failure I’ve had, and the disk was just 3 years old when they failed. The drives I’ve had are 7 years old and I’ve never had an issue.
The price I paid for the original SSD was $150 and the one I ordered on Amazon was $450. SSD prices have gone through the roof where you can buy them and they are out of stock on the Sandisk store.
So I did not want to get into a situation where I had an SSD failure and was unable to purchase a replacement or where the price was way higher than it should be. It was a good suggestion, but I didn’t want to take the risk.
I hope this helps anyone doing anything similar!