This is a follow-on topic for

How do you keep your digital music files?
https://2ahawaii.com/index.php?topic=36625.0

Background:

I have 2 Network Attached Storage (NAS) devices, each with 4 x 2TB drives in a RAID-5 configuration.  That's just under 6TB of usable storage each.

-- ReadyNAS NV+
-- ReadyNAS RN314

ReadyNAS is a Netgear product, originally produced and sold by Infrant Technologies.

As part of my previous "project" I installed the free-to-try O/S called "unRAID" on an INTEL PC.  I initially included 3 x SSD/NVME drives and 5 x mechanical drives 2TB each.  I used 2 drives for parity/redundancy, and 4 for data storage, giving me about 2TB x 4 drives = 8TB storage.  So far, I've used a little over 3TB.

What happened?
The reason for this new thread is I had a drive starting to fail on the RN314.  Nice thing about most RAID devices: they can alert you when there's a problem.

I finally had the time to delve into it, after deciding what I wanted to change.  I knew I was going to take my NV+ offline eventually, and this seems to be the right time. 

My NV+ runs an older version of LINUX, is a bit slow transferring large data files, and is limited by the O/S to 2TB disks.   By comparison, the newer RN314 runs a much more current LINUX version, is super-fast transferring files by comparison, and so far appears to have no limitation on sizes of drives it can handle.

So, I replaced the failing drive in the RN314 with a drive from the NV+.  There's a safety feature that keeps you from formatting a drive from one ReadyNAS in another one, so I cloned the failing drive onto the replacement.  The RN314 picked it up and rebuilt if perfectly.

Since I had 2 vacant spots in the case and on the LSI disk controller in the unRAID server, I decided to move 2 of the 3 remaining disks from the NV+ to that box.

unRAID licensing is at 3 levels.  You can use it for free for 30 days, but after that, you need to pay for a license:

-- Basic $59 - 6 attached devices
-- Plus $89 - 12     "             "
-- Pro $129 - unlimited       "  (technically it's limited by the O/S at 28 data drives plus cache, 2 x parity disks and infinite unassigned disks that aren't part of the array)

The unRAID PC boots directly from a USB thumb drive, which isn't counted in the license.

So, I had the Plus license with 9 devices:  6 in the array counting 2 x parity drives, 2 x cache SSDs, and 1 unattached SSD for storing virtual machines, etc. That left 3 spots, and I only wanted 2.

Shutdown the PC, attached the 2 NV+ disks, and rebooted.  The drives showed up as "unassigned".

First step in using new drives is to clear them.  There's a utility called "Pre-Clear" that can be downloaded, but it's no longer needed.  Pre-clear's main use was to clear new disks while still having the RAID array running.  If you didn't pre-clear it, the unRAID O/S would stop the array, then clear the disk/s.  Depending on the drive size and how many passes you choose, it could take DAYS to complete.

Since my disks are not new, I was curious if the system would be able to clear, format and assign them.  So instead I used Pre-Clear.  This made sure the drives had no read or write errors, and it zeroed out all the data to make it quicker to add to the array (no parity needs to be rebuilt). 

After many hours waiting on Pre-clear to finish, the older disk showed no formatted partition, but the newer one showed a journaled partition that didn't match to other unRAID disks.  So, I deleted both drive's partitions in the MAIN --> UNASSIGNED DEVICES tab, clicked on the FORMAT button for each, and watched as both were properly reformatted.

To assign them to the array, I first had to stop the array under MAIN --> ARRAY OPERATIONS, then go to the MAIN --> ARRAY DEVICES tab, and used the pulldown selector to add both drives.

Once I restarted the array in MAIN --> ARRAY OPERATIONS.  The system saw the formatted disks, and immediately added them.  Easy.

If you ever want to remove a disk from the array, it basically involves stopping the array, erasing the array device list, and reassigning the drives you want to keep.  Starting the array will remove the drive/s you didn't add back to to the array.

Finished!

Anyway, I now have 11 devices and 12TB of storage (8TB before + 4TB added).

I also ran the Pre-Clear to test the bad drive from the RN314 and the 4th drive from the NV+.  The first showed increased SMART stats indicating it's probably failing, and the other finished without errors.  I'll keep the good drive as a spare for both the RN314 and the unRAID arrays.  At some point, I'll buy larger drives for the 4-bay RN314.  That'll give me more drives to use on the unRAID if I can find the physical space and maybe add another LSI controller.  It's a toss-up to keep adding disks and increasing the power demand, or spend money instead on larger drives and just chuck the 2TB disks.  Being an IT packrat is a bitch sometimes.

Now I need to rethink my backup strategies.  I also need to put my NV+ on Craig's List and eBay.  I'm sure someone needs a working one for parts or to replace one they've been using for years.

Note:  The latest Windows OS's created a problem with the NV+.  It can no longer be accessed via the Windows networking protocols.  I can use FTP/SFTP, SSH, and RSYNC to do backups and move files, but I can't easily browse the contents of the NAS from the Windows File Explorer.

Thanks, Bill!   

They stopped support for Smb 1.0 on the newer versions of windows.  If you need it, you need to enable SMB 1.0 client  in Windows Features.

They stopped support for Smb 1.0 on the newer versions of windows.  If you need it, you need to enable SMB 1.0 client  in Windows Features.

Correct.  Since I was just using that NAS to backup the unRAID using LINUX/UNIX tools, I didn't really bother with SMB 1.0 on Windows. 

I've been using the newer NAS for my regular file storage (in-house cloud).  I'll be moving that data to the unRAID, and setting up the NAS to do backups of photos and documents.  Plenty of space on the NAS since I don't include movie or music.