I’ve been reading a bunch of threads, and they indicate that there should be an option to “migrate” from JBOD to Raid 1, which wouldn’t erase the data on my one hard drive, but I’m not seeing that. All I see is “Switch to RAID 1.” Is there maybe some plugin I have to turn on? If not, what’s the recommendation of migrating from JBOD to Raid 1 without losing the data on my one hard drive? The other hard drive is blank, so I only care about mirroring the other one.
It’s good to note that the one hard drive with all of the data is 6 TB, and the empty one is 8 TB, so I’m not sure if that makes a difference… but ideally, I’d like to copy from the 6 TB to the 8 TB, and then make the 8 TB the main one. Apologies if this has been asked before, but I wasn’t able to find an answer in the other threads/manual.
ok. . .raid 1 mirrors the drives. So if you have an 8TB drive and a 6TB drive. . .the result will be a redundant drive system with 6TB capacity.
ok. . .converting from JBOD to raid 1. Boy. . . I really can’t guarantee that both drives won’t get wiped when you do this. Others can chime in. (I think it is the act of establishing a new raid that will do it in).
If I was you. . . .regardless of what ANYBODY says. . .create a backup of the 6TB drive somewhere else before creating the raid. And since I have more money than sense. . . I would probably buy another 8tb drive to pair with your current 8tb drive to create a proper 8TB raid 1 unit.
I am pretty sure you can add the 8TB drive to the existing system as a separate JBOD volume on the EX2. Then you would have two logical drives (one 6TB, one 8TB). Pretty sure you can do that without wiping data.
Yeah, I definitely want the data to mirror, and I realize the capacity difference is weird, but the 8 TB was on sale, and I couldn’t refuse the price. I’m fine with the max size being 6 TB.
Re backing it up, unfortunately, that means buying yet another drive , which I’d rather not spend another $200 on that. Might be able to partition it among the various devices I have in my house, but that seems hazardous and time consuming, haha. I agree though… if I had a spare drive, I wouldn’t’ve asked the question… just would’ve done that, as I think that’s the true answer here. Was hoping I was missing a step though.
I already formatted drive 2 as JBOD, hoping maybe that’s why I didn’t have a migrate option in Raid 1 switching. If I can’t switch to Raid 1 without migrating the data, I may set drive 2 to copy from drive 1 in a nightly job or something. I’ll have to keep thinking this one over. Thanks for the input.
If you already have two drives in a two drive bay, both as a JBOD, then you CANT migrate to RAID1 without trashing the data on both drives.
Having a single drive, migrating to RAID1 can be done, if the migration routines support it (like the previous poster, I haven’t tried it, but seeing the huge limitations on WDs implementation, I wouldn’t bet on it), But that’s not possible if your data is already spread across two drives. Regardless of how smart the programmers are
Your best option would be to do as mr. NAS_user says, and store your data somewhere else. Then rebuild your system from scratch. You can then build a redundant 6TB raid1 system. You CAN technically, again supposing the algorithms available supports it, put the remaining 2TB in a non-raid share. However, if in the future you feel like replacing the 6TB drive, then I would suggest you dont do that, so you can safely, and easily expand the raid volume
Hmm, so you’re saying if I took out drive 2 and tried to migrate drive 1 by itself, it might work? I might try that… Maybe I’ll copy the essentials off of drive 1 first, and then give it a try.
Yes. I would assume you would need to format the drive, for the array to see it as a “new” drive… The copy process might be tedious, but it is easy and manageable
Yeah, it took about a day, but I was able to get it all back and running as RAID 1. It’s a little disconcerting that I can’t actually view the contents on the other drive just to be super sure my data’s been copied, but I guess that’s something I’ll have to live with. Thanks all for you help!
After a couple of days of struggling with the problem of having one disk already in the systems as a JBOD and trying to add a second one (new never installed before) in order to move data from the first to the second, the only solution was:
Extract the first disk
Insert the new one and install as a JBOD. This is what makes the drive visible on the desktop and usable. otherwise it simply sits asa drive in the ADMIN panel but cannot be used
Reinsert the first disk
You can then see both disk and you can copy from one to the other.
The problem will be in a few weeks when I need to insert a new disk that will be in RAID 1 to the second…
, which I’d rather not spend another $200 on that. Might be able to partition it among the various devices I have in my house, but that seems hazardous and time consuming, haha. I agree though… if I had a spare drive, I wouldn’t’ve asked the question… just would’ve done that, as I think that’s the true answer here. Was hoping I was missing a step though.
