Upgrading Drives in Terrastation

[mjwilcox12]

   

I would like to upgrade the drives in my TerraStatio II. I read in another method thread that replacing each drive one at a time and letting the array rebuild between each will allow the TS to see all the capacity after the fourth drive is done.

 

When the last rebuild is done after the last drive is replaced, will the original array automatically grow from 1TB to 4TB (less the raid 5 overhead, of course.) or will I need to copy my data off and restore.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike

[sethz]

   

RAID utilizes the space of the drives at the time of creation, so you would have to delete the RAID and build a new one.

 

Please note though that upgrading the drives to a larger size is not supported by Buffalo and would void your warranty.

[matthew33]

   

I'm in the process now with my Terastation Pro v1. It's hard to find info about this, so I've backupped everything first.

Trying the one by one process. Keep you posted.

I don't know if there is a lot of difference on this between I and II Terastations.

[matthew33]

   

I did 2 drives so far (drive 4 and 3), one drive each night. Upgrading from 250Gb to 500Gb.

Changing drives is easy, a few clicks and a minute later... while the array is rebuilding you have acces to all your data. That's nice, I thought the unit would be offline in the process.

Rebuilding about 6 hours (on the 4x250b array) for each drive. Still I guess that in order to use the increased size I will have to delete the array after all.

[mjwilcox12]

   

Thanks for the updates. Will be very interested in what happens after the fourth drive is done.

 

Thanks,

 

Mike 

[matthew33]

   

The fourth drive just switched. The reason I do this slowly (everynight) is to make sure that all new drives have run at least 24 hours... You can't have a new drive failing while rebuilding the array on another new drive :)

 

So fingers crossed. So far so good.

I had Seagate 7200.9 and now Samsung Spinpoint Raid drives, the Samsungs seem a bit cooler.

 

 

 

[matthew33]

   

Well, all drives exchanged without any problem.

But, as to be expected, I'll have to delete the existing Raid5 array en make a new one in order to get the increased file size.

[matthew33]

   

After deleting/recreating the Array the shared folders seem to exist, but you'll have to delete them all and remake 'm.

 

And... as a 2nd surprise... how odd is it that I can use the USB drive for backup, but there is NO RESTORE OPTION to put files back from the USB disc onto the Terastation.

So... now everything is being send over network to my PC and back to the Terastation... kind of a odd way and... kind... of... slow...

 

But... 1.4 Tb of data on the Terastation now :)

 

 

[MarkDee]

   

New member.

 

In searching through the forums this morning - I've not seen any definitive word on whether the original Terastation (4X250GB) can be upgraded beyond Matthew33's 500GB experience -- well explained here.

 

I understand the warranty issues.  I've seen other instances of people asking this question but -- help me out here if I'm wrong -- I've not seen anyone answer the straightfoward question :  could Matthew33's upgrade taken advantage of 1TB drives?  [ EDIT: Couldn't find 1TB IDE drives anyway - so I suppose the only larger options might be 640 or 750... ]

 

I have seen someone (I believe in regards to another model) hint at 1TB being a limit -- again, my interest is completely in regards to an original TeraStation.

 

My specs...

Model : Hd-H1.0TGL/R5

Firmware Version : 2.16

Drives (4X) : Maxtor 6B250R0 (Formatted at 243,481,141 Kb)

 

/ Thanks

/ Mark

Message Edited by MarkDee on 05-21-2009 02:16 PM

[MarkDee]

   

Well, it's been quite a while and I never got an answer to my last post

(maybe I should have learned something from that!)

but at any rate, time marches on and I'm going to finally act on my desire

to double the space in my original TeraStation.

 

Since this unit has performed flawlessly for years and years -- even as I add additional capacity to my network via other products [EDIT: including a recent Buffalo DriveStation Duo (2X1TB) purchase] -- I want to take my original 1TB (running in Raid5) and up it to 2TB.

 

My intent is to purchase Western Digital Caviar Blue 500GB Hard Drives

 

[ link to TigerDirect.CA product page...

http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=3318103&CatId=525 ]

 

Just posting one last time to see -- has anyone experienced anything new (or unreported) about this process ?

Any feedback about these particular drives ?

 

/ Thanks in Advance

/ Mark

 

Again / My specs :

 

Model : Hd-H1.0TGL/R5

Firmware Version : 2.16

Drives (4X) : Maxtor 6B250R0 (Formatted at 243,481,141 Kb)

[AlexanderSmith]

"Please note though that upgrading the drives to a larger size is not supported by Buffalo and would void your warranty."

 

You could try horse racing tips which should make money.

[JoshC]

We prefer that you didnt until your warranty is up but many other have done it and there units work fine.  The solved storage thread is a good place to start if your looking for information.