Asustor NAS Replace Volume 1

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Hi,

I recently purchased an Asustor NIMBUSTOR 4 AS5304T, with 3 16TB SATA drives and a single 64GB SSD drive, I have set it up as a single volume RAID-5 using the 3 16TB drives with the SSD as a read-cache drive. However, I have noticed that some of the apps running on the system will periodically access the drives, meaning they never hibernate, putting up the energy usage of the system by about 3-4 times.

I am thinking therefore that it might be better if I used the SSD as Volume 1 of the system and had the RAID-5 array as a second volume (I don't think I really need the SSD cache as the system will mainly be used for media streaming, so the regular drives should be plenty fast enough).

So firstly, does anyone know if this is likely to help with the drive access problem?

And secondly, can I do this by resetting the system and setting it up again with just the SSD installed as Volume 1, and then adding in the RAID drives to create a new Volume 2 with my data intact? Obviously realise I'd have to re-setup all the various apps etc. but as the system is pretty new that shouldn't be much work, but I'd prefer to not have to copy across the data again as it is about 20TB, so it takes days! Luckily I still have the original data, so I could just clear everything and start again, but I'd prefer to avoid that if I could.

ASUS support site says you can place existing drives into a new NAS and it should work, but think that is a case of putting them in and using them as the same volume, so not quite what I want.
 
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I got no answers for you but I am interested how this turns out as I have a Synology and have not as yet bothered to set it up to hibernate due to my assumption that Plex will stop the drives spinning down as Plex is constantly monitoring the drives for new media, and I have always assumed this would make hibernating drives moot. I am wondering if it is Plex which causing yours to spin the drives up when it feels like it, which would confirm my suspicions on how Plex would work with hibernation set up. Hopefully some boffin will reply with how to configure Plex so that it still can scan for media whenever you add something new, but won't stop the drives spinning down for when you are not even at home.
 
Yes, I'm not using Plex, but something similar called Zappiti Server, however, I don't believe it should constantly scan for new media as you have to set that off manually, so I'm hoping that whatever the drive access is related to would be able to run on the SSD, rather than needing to access the main drives.
 
The AS5304T seems to be the most successful device in Asustor's range as it has an excellent balance of CPU power to price. It will also take 16GB RAM despite the official limit only being 8GB. I've currently got 12GB in mine...

I think what you're proposing to do should work but you will have to re-create the shares as the RAID will become Volume2, as you note. But I've no idea if it will fix your problem. I'm about to do a similar experiment with mine with 2 SSDs in RAID1 and 2 HHDs also in RAID1 to see if I can access media files on the SSDs without the HDDs spinning up. My gut feel is 'no' but it's worth trying. I now have an AS6706T as my main NAS so the AS5304T can be my sandbox.
 
If it was a Synology, then in theory you could do this by removing all the RAID5 drives - install only the SSD and then reinstall DSM (the synology OS), you should then be able to refit the RAID5 drives and they should be recognised/ be to be able to be imported.

Not sure how similar the Asustor is (especially in terms of where and how it stores it's OS), but assuming you have a backup of anything important, then might just be a case of trying it.
 
I believe Asustor stores the OS (ADM) on whatever makes up Volume1 so it should work the same as Synology.

However, much to my surprise, I've been able to stream music from the SSD-based Volume1 and the HDDs of Volume2 didn't spin up until I opened the web GUI after 30 minutes or so. So what the OP wants to do may well solve his problem.

Would this be a good time to make rude comments about three-drive RAID5? ;)
 
I have the AS5304T, you need to backup your data and start again for it to work as you want.

Then only put the SSD in and create Volume 1. Then put your drives back in and set as volume 2 and put your data back on.

There are some ways using the command line to change volumes but from what I found it's not worth the hassle and risk.

My HDDs all sleep now. Even with Plex running as that's all on the SSD.
 
Well, seem to have got it to work. Did a full reset of the system with just the SSD in, then put the RAID disks back, did some messing about with a config file using SSH and it now seems to be correctly recognising the RAID array and all my files are showing up! The hard disks have also finally gone to sleep, though have not yet re-installed the server software for my media player, so will see what happens when I do that!

What's the issue with a 3 disc RAID 5 array BTW, just the amount of usable storage compared to the size of the drives, or is there something else I should be aware of?
 
What's the issue with a 3 disc RAID 5 array BTW, just the amount of usable storage compared to the size of the drives, or is there something else I should be aware of?
Raid 5 in general is a bad idea - if one drive fails, the stress of rebuilding / possibility of an unrecoverable read error during rebuilding, will often cause the array to fail completely and lose data.

Raid 5 can still make sense - it's the most space efficient raid with at least some kind of resilience - it's ideal for storage of media and the like that is only an inconvenience if a failure does occur - it shouldn't be used for irreplaceable data (although irreplaceable data should be backed up in more than 1 place anyway)
 
Raid 5 in general is a bad idea - if one drive fails, the stress of rebuilding / possibility of an unrecoverable read error during rebuilding, will often cause the array to fail completely and lose data.

Raid 5 can still make sense - it's the most space efficient raid with at least some kind of resilience - it's ideal for storage of media and the like that is only an inconvenience if a failure does occur - it shouldn't be used for irreplaceable data (although irreplaceable data should be backed up in more than 1 place anyway)
Ah right, the drive is used for storing my media collection, with the original discs (CDs and DVDs) boxed up and stored, so not unrecoverable data (just annoying as it will take an absolute age). So RAID5 is probably suitable for my use case, obviously something more robust would be better but that would require more drives and a bigger NAS, so more cost.
 
I have a particular problem with RAID5 over three drives as, if one fails, the array is below the number of drives needed for RAID5 and I don't know what happens then. I do remember I was installing MS Small Business Server (SBS) for a client many years ago and the MS documentation said not to use three-drive RAID5. And this was in the days when RAID5 was all we used.
 
Well, the change seems to have done the trick. With the media server software set up and working the drives are still able to go into hibernation and the power usage drops, so seems successful overall.
 
I have a particular problem with RAID5 over three drives as, if one fails, the array is below the number of drives needed for RAID5 and I don't know what happens then.
3 Drives is the minimum needed to create a RAID5 array, but not the minimum needed to operate. All data is still accessible as the parity stripe and data stripes from the remaining drives are enough to construct the data missing from the failed drive.
 
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