Time To Replace Drives

1st Official Post

    Eight years ago I setup my NAS with OMV and it has been great! Now I'm wanting to "refresh" the four drives in my RAID 10 array before one of them crashes on me. I was in way over my head eight years ago and am still in way over my head but can someone point me to a guide on how to replace the drives? Hopefully a guide that a long time noob can understand.


    Much thanks,

    Craig

    • Official Post

    Without details, i would suggest:

    1. update your backup
    2. install OMV6
    3. remove the old drives and add the new drives (if you have enough ports you can also attach old and new drives at the same time)
    4. restore from your backup
    Quote from macom

    Without details, i would suggest:

    1. update your backup
    2. install OMV6
    3. remove the old drives and add the new drives (if you have enough ports you can also attach old and new drives at the same time)
    4. restore from your backup

    I cannot believe I never saw your response! Thank you for that. I am now back on this trail and trying to refresh my 4 drives before they start failing. Your instructions will hopefully get me on the trail.

    No, that is not how I would do that.


    Sure, have a good backup - but you can actually do this way.


    You do this procedure one by one.


    1. You fail a drive

    Code
    mdadm /dev/md2 --fail /dev/sdX


    2. Then you remove the drive from the raid

    Code
    mdadm /dev/md2 --remove /dev/sdX


    Now you power down your system and replace the physical drive with a new one.


    3. Now you readd the new drive and wait for raid to get synched:

    Code
    mdadm /dev/md2 --add /dev/sdX


    Please be aware that this operation can potentially fail and you should have (as always) a good backup.


    After you have done the procedure 4 times, you have replaced all for disks in your raid 10 with shiny fresh new drives.

    Everything is possible, sometimes it requires Google to find out how.

    Thanks for that advice. That's about how I thought it should go but seeing as I was still back on OMV 4.x I thought might as well freshen everything up. I have my data backed up.


    I also have 4 new drives but can't seem to get the OMV to boot after install. Is there a size limit to the system drive? I decided to try installing OMV6 on one of the old 3tb data drives. Is that too big? I get this on boot then BIOS.

    The screenshot is from the network card boot try. It fails, because you have not connected any network cable to the intel network card.


    Anyhow not your issue.


    Check the BIOS for boot order.

    Disable network boot - you most probably will not need it.

    Check if your new drive is the 1st drive in boot order or at least the first HDD/SSD.


    Then try a reboot, you should see the Debian Boot message.


    If not, try to remove any drive other the OS drive, and reinstall.


    This gives you better chances of success.


    Also try to put your OS drive to SATA port 0 of the onboard controller (whatever that is on your mainboard).


    All in all you should end up with this drive being /dev/sda .. and then it should run pretty smoothly.

    Everything is possible, sometimes it requires Google to find out how.

    • Official Post
    Quote from golfnut324

    I decided to try installing OMV6 on one of the old 3tb data drives.

    Why not go with a 16 to 32GB usb thumb drive? Easy to clone to have backup of the OS. And probably more reliable than an used HDD. Lower power consumption might be a bonus depending on where you live or how you get your electricity.

    Then I would just go for a small SSD ..


    That was the cheapest I could find in a few seconds...


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    www.amazon.de


    This is Amazon expensive :) 11,xx Euros


    You can find it even cheaper at 8,37 Euros ...


    A pen drive is pretty much same range now and much slower and less secure (e.g. wear leveling only on very few thumb drives).

    Everything is possible, sometimes it requires Google to find out how.

    • Official Post
    Quote from golfnut324

    I read that some app needs to be installed

    openmediavault-flashmemory from omv-extras. Very easy to install once you have installed omv-extras. No configuration needed. Just install.


    ssd vs. USB thumb drive also depends on the number of sata ports you have. I ran OMV for years from ssd, but moved to usb thumb drive for the easy cloning process. Of course there are other ways as well.

    That is how I feel most of the time. But, made good progress. Running OMV on usb thumb. All updates. Plugins installed. Built RAID 10 on new drives. Currently cleaning, resyncing. Ready to install omv-extras.


    Question: (nOOb alert!)

    Appears that once a drive has been part of an omv raid, future installs of omv run afoul of latent files or partitioning structure? I noticed that installs on the used drive went to partition 2 whereas on the clean usb install went to partition 1 with successful boot into the operating system. What is best way to totally wipe the old RAID drive?


    With the os on the usb I have a spare SATA slot so I want to salvage some use of the old drives by running RSYNC jobs to them through the openmediavault-filebrowser plugin.

    • Official Post
    Quote from golfnut324

    I noticed that installs on the used drive went to partition 2 whereas on the clean usb install went to partition 1 with successful boot into the operating system.

    This part I do not understand.

    Quote from golfnut324

    What is best way to totally wipe the old RAID drive?

    I would use the short wipe from the GUI of OMV and then check with wipefs -n /dev/sdX if there are any traces left. If so, use wipefs to wipe them.



    Quote from golfnut324

    running RSYNC jobs to them through the openmediavault-filebrowser plugin.

    Why through the filebrowser plugin and not with rsync that comes with OMV out of the box?

    Quote from golfnut324

    Question: (nOOb alert!)

    Appears that once a drive has been part of an omv raid, future installs of omv run afoul of latent files or partitioning structure? I noticed that installs on the used drive went to partition 2 whereas on the clean usb install went to partition 1 with successful boot into the operating system. What is best way to totally wipe the old RAID drive?


    It looks like you want to reuse a drive that was part of a raid before, correct?


    Very simple is to use


    Code
    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=100


    That erases all information in the first 100MB of the drive and therefore eliminates all RAID information. (most likely the first 4MB would be good enough anyway ...

    Everything is possible, sometimes it requires Google to find out how.

    Quote from macom

    This part I do not understand

    Me neither, though SerErris is correct. The drive was part of the original raid. Therefore:

    Quote from macom

    check with wipefs -n /dev/sdX if there are any traces left. If so, use wipefs to wipe them

    And/or:

    Quote from SerErris

    dd if=/dev/zero of=/dev/sdX bs=1M count=100


    I am still struggling with understanding the filebrowser plugin. More importantly struggling with file sharing from my laptop client (Linux Mint) to/from the shared folder(s) on omv. Still have a little hair.

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