NAS - manual copy

[danutz_plusplus]

I'm taking my first dive into the world of NASes (haven't really seen much of a need so far, but I said what the hell; maybe it'll ease some of my file management).
I decided on an Asustor Lockerstor 4 Gen 2.
I'm gonna start it off with 2 Seagate IronWolf Pro at 8TBs.

Since the NAS has 4 bays I'm wondering if I'll be able to insert a 3rd or 4th existing drive (meaning there's already content on them, and of a different size than the two above), but they're not meant for long-term use.
I simply want to use the extra bays as a simple way to copy off of those extra drives onto the two main ones.
Basically, I'd like to avoid needing to connect any drives to my PC and then push that data to the NAS. And simply use just the NAS to transfer data over, from current drives to the storage drives.

I would expect this to be doable, but thought it be useful to ask some more experienced heads on this.

 

[notdart]

Depends on numerous details - since this is a vendor box; it depends how they implemented their file system. If you raid the material in some fashion then it depends on how you raid it and how they implement the raid file system. For example if you mirror the data - they may or may not allow you to insert 2 more disks and mirror them. Then they might increase the file system size or they might require you create two independent volume. All of these things can be supported - it is a question of how they chose to implement things or if they are using off the shelf software like mdadm or zfs or ... which one they chose.

Since this is a 'black' box it just depends on how much detail they chose to provide - if they are using gnu license software to implement their box then all documentation should be available in some form (including source code).
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A quick google search suggest they run some sort of version of linux with various supported file system but i'm too lazy to figure out the flexiblity of their disk sub system and if it has been customized. Most raid file system will not allow you to add disks to them to expand the filesystem (brtfs does have that option but in raid mode it has a lot of bugs and i would not trust it). zfs is an excellent file system with raid support - but I don't think they support that. My guess is that if it allows you to add two new disks later on - they will have to be configured as a new volume and cannot be added to an existing raid.
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Btw i personally skipped the whole nas box thing - i purchased 8 disks - stuck them in my over sized pc case - purchased an lsi dumb controller - put 4 disks on it and 4 on the mother board and fired up zfs and built an 8+2 raid set. When i had to make it larger - i replaced all the disks (one by one) with larger disks and then told zfs to use the extra space. Never really understood the purpose of a dedicated nas box. Oh and when i wanted to share the file system i just exported it so my other computers could access limited portions of the directory tree.

 

[pibbuR]

I have a Synology DS 918+ 4-bay NAS, 3 HD's in a RAID 5 and one SSD set up as a chache.

I think that for many of us using a NAS is much simpler to set up and maintain. It typically also comes with several nice - if you want them - additional server features, user administration and file share access rights. database server, web server etc, SAMBA, etc. It's of course possible to set up all this on a PC (I have done that before), but using a NAS is easier. BTW, mine also comes with a PACS-server, which is fun for a radiologist wannabe has been.

I think its possible bu I don't remember how to use in my case bay number 4 for a replaceable spare disk, but one thing I can do is connect an USB HD/SSD docking station. External USB disks can be mounted and unmounted in my NAS without affecting what's on them. And the docking station allows me to switch disks fairly easy (just remember to unmount them before taking them out).

pibbuR

 

[SveNitoR]

I have a basic synology 2-bay NAS. This means I can't install a third disk, but I use a built in function that automatically asks if I want back ups of certain important folders (photos, music, documents) whenever I connect a USB harddrive. Works well to make backups.

I've considered buying an external hard drive enclosure to make it easier to have 2 backups and leave one at work if something were to happen at my house, but I couldn't be bothered yet.

Whenever I get to updating my router, switch and computer to 10Gb ethernet, I'll also buy a new NAS with 10Gb. And SSD support.

 

[SveNitoR]

Depends on numerous details - since this is a vendor box; it depends how they implemented their file system. If you raid the material in some fashion then it depends on how you raid it and how they implement the raid file system. For example if you mirror the data - they may or may not allow you to insert 2 more disks and mirror them. Then they might increase the file system size or they might require you create two independent volume. All of these things can be supported - it is a question of how they chose to implement things or if they are using off the shelf software like mdadm or zfs or ... which one they chose.

Since this is a 'black' box it just depends on how much detail they chose to provide - if they are using gnu license software to implement their box then all documentation should be available in some form (including source code).
-
A quick google search suggest they run some sort of version of linux with various supported file system but i'm too lazy to figure out the flexiblity of their disk sub system and if it has been customized. Most raid file system will not allow you to add disks to them to expand the filesystem (brtfs does have that option but in raid mode it has a lot of bugs and i would not trust it). zfs is an excellent file system with raid support - but I don't think they support that. My guess is that if it allows you to add two new disks later on - they will have to be configured as a new volume and cannot be added to an existing raid.
-
Btw i personally skipped the whole nas box thing - i purchased 8 disks - stuck them in my over sized pc case - purchased an lsi dumb controller - put 4 disks on it and 4 on the mother board and fired up zfs and built an 8+2 raid set. When i had to make it larger - i replaced all the disks (one by one) with larger disks and then told zfs to use the extra space. Never really understood the purpose of a dedicated nas box. Oh and when i wanted to share the file system i just exported it so my other computers could access limited portions of the directory tree.

Regarding just using your computer as storage, there is one problem for me with that: it uses more electricity to keep running compared to a NAS.

 

[danutz_plusplus]

Yeah, thanks for the input from everyone, but I just went with the more simple solution.
I really didn't want to have open up my desktop case to connect my sata drive to my pc so I just bought one of those sata to usb adapters (that comes with the power adapter as well). Much less complicated.

 

[notdart]

Regarding just using your computer as storage, there is one problem for me with that: it uses more electricity to keep running compared to a NAS.

Naw; i use the same machine as a mail machine so it needs to be kept running.

 

[Redglyph]

I've seen that done with NAS (isn't that an option with Synology?), since after all they have all the necessary hardware to run another server. Maybe there's less choice than on a more common platform though.