Upgrading IOmega ix2-200 to bigger hard drives.
I purchased an iomega ix2-200 around a year and a half ago, wonderful device. however since then, the data i have in my household has grown. So i thought, i would replace the 2 x 1tb drives it came bundled with and upgrade them to 2 x 2tb drives with future planning in mind…. clearly not an easy feat as you will find out why.
first things first, i love learning and trying new things, but one thing about me is that as much as i love learning, i no longer have the time or luxury to try and do extensive research and properly understand things. This gives me two valid lessons; 1- i should just save headaches and RTFM since it often goes this way. 2- being a hands-on person, this is undoubtedly the best way for me to learn something.
Nonetheless, it became clear that iomega had intended to continue their monetary gain by simplifying the process and taking the complexity of such activity while at the same time having you return to them and shell out more money in their direction. Now if i didnt have 7 hard drives loitering & littering the space i refer to as my hybrid desk-home office space it would make sense. however i have all these drives and i wanted to use 2 of the 2tb size i already own.
first attempt
removed BOTH 1tb OEM drives and replaced with 2tb drives… powered on, get what after googling around discovered is called a WLoD (white light of death) – how so if these drives were working fine when i tested them prior to putting them on.
research revealed that the partition and files required for the device to start up are in fact NOT in some sort of onboard memory, but in fact in drive(s). The boot partition is created on both drives to ensure if one drive fails it can still boot from the other one and once a faulty drive is replaced that it is able to start up properly.
there are some page hits when researching ‘upgrading’ drives on this device but some required booting into linux and partitioning and copying files and dl an older unencrypted bios from the web.
if youre like me and embrace a KISS way of life, then you damn well want to avoid all those extra steps. having ALL the data previously moved to my DNS-321 gives me the ability to not give a damn about the data, in fact i never trust upgrades to go smoothly, so i always copy all the data and delete it from the device i am tinkering with so i can manually queue it all back and manually copy it myself.
heres what i did and it worked (note that there is probably a step(s) there that can be skipped, however its working so feel free to skip the step(s) if you figure it out and let me know (via comment) if it works with it removed)
1- left original iomega drive (1tb) in bay 1 and replaced bay 2 with my own 2tb drive
2- booted and went into drive management and added drive and rebuild raid 1 array – took a while (but not FOREVER)
3- after that completed, and it booted up, successfully.. powered back off and replaced bay #1 with my 2nd 2tb drive while leaving my 1st 2tb drive (mentioned in step 1) in there
4- powered on and once again went into drive management and rebuilt drive 1 array
5- after that completed, it saw both drives but the available space was only the size of the smaller original 1tb drive, so i had to set protection level to raid 0, it gave me the schpeel about it earasing all data.
6- once that finished it saw an a striped capacity of 3.64tb
7- set protection to level 1 (raid 1) and applyed changes to rebuild the arraid in a mirrored mode.
Now i have the intended capacity of 3.64TB in a mirrored (RAID 1) mode
i realized i could have probably just set it to raid 0 and saved me time then re-raid them to raid 1 but as i recalled the boot partition one only 1 drive i got paranoid and took the extra step, it may be possible to skip this extra precaution but i didnt do it. again, i am interested if any one tries it the shortened way and it works, please let me know.
so there you have it. i dont recall the temperature of the old drives but this one when i replaced the drives was running a little hot, do tell if you notice temperature changes. the device has an internal built-in fan but i guess it hasnt reached its threshold to go off. this temperature may also be affected by the fact that its accessing both drives while it was rebuilding arraid.
thats a simple way to get this done without having to do some crazy linux commands, however if you want to know those ways here are the links
http://tentacles.posterous.com/upgrading-the-disks-in-an-iomega-storcenter-i
http://zepman.tweakblogs.net/blog/3552/iomega-ix2-200-bad-flash-recovery-and-hdd-replacement.html
one thing i must mention, is DO NOT reformat your original drives. iomega considers this a way to void warranty, so you may want to hang on to that in case you ever require warranty (as long as your still within the warranty period) and them to recognize it, else you are SOOL.
GENIUS!!!!!!!!!!!
thanks for the reply, it was more of necessity that drives curious minds to experiment and come up with innovative results
thanks man, figured i went through the pain, may as well contribute something to the internet
quick question….what drive types are in the Iomega, SATA. I’m assuming its not IDE. What drives did you go with ?
SATA drives, 2 x 2TB drives.
What HDs did you use inside the Iomega
i used two of these, http://www.bestbuy.com/site/Western+Digital+-+Caviar+Green+2TB+Internal+Serial+ATA+Hard+Drive/9234465.p?id=1218064150518&skuId=9234465 some people said that the ‘green’ drives are risky since they tend to spin down, but if its in raid then in theory they should both spin up and down simultaneously. I’ve had them running since i wrote that article.
You don’t have time to RTFM, but you have time to write this blog? hmm… Don’t get me wrong, thanks for the valuable information, but this is a wrong excuse. Just admit that you’re lazy as hell
yes, im lazy, but also i enjoy figuring things out on my own as it tends to stay in my head better.
i find that sometimes skipping RTFM gives me a more tactile and hands on approach to learning things, even if i do them wrong the first time, it provides with sonme potential ‘real world tech support’ — but yes.. im lazy too somewhat
Hey is your device goes to sleep mode?(disks off)
its set to go off in 10 minutes of idle
its currently set to go to sleep if idle for 10 min. thats the way i wanted it based on hosted content.
yes, its meant to do that. in theory though, if you have an always active IO flow (R/W) then it shouldnt go to sleep, that sleep feature is only when idling. if thats too much a risk (depending on what you plan on carvign up your storage for, go with a non green drive)
After trying to do exactly the same thing (and failing) on my ix2-200, I came across your site..
here’s what I did WRONG the first time
Steps 1-4 as you
Step 5 go to Manage Disks > Erase Disks
Step 6 get annoyed as I get a WLoD and 2 blank drives
Step 7 goto Step 1
PLEASE NOTE THIS DOES NOT WORK….
I’m currently rebuilding my first 2TB array on RAID 1 from my previous 1TB Iomega disk (Step 2) and I’m now following YOUR instructions.
Thanks for the guide
(replaced the noisy as hell Iomega (Seagate) 1TB drives with whisper quiet 2TB WD Red drives (NAS use))
send me a link to the drives you used please, id like to look into them for when the thing needs a fresh drive (hopegully not anytime soon)
Thank you so much to both of you. To alfredo for these instructions that worked flawlessly, and to Mathmos_Man for recommending these wonderful drives. These post resolved two of the main problems with my IX2-200:
1- Limited capacity (which, interestenly enough, iomega directly informed me that it couldn’t be increased)
2- HD noise. I still cannot believe how quiet these WD RED drives are. I have the unit in my living room, as it is serving media to my TV, and i don’t hear a thing anymore… not a single sound. The “coofee maker” sound that it used to have, is gone for good.
Please post a link to the drives you ended up getting. It may be useful for some to know the model and size for when upgrade time comes again.
you’re absolutely right in Iomega wanting to keep you in their coffers for as long as they can i have an ix2-CE and its amazing. one drive failed and they quickly sent me another,but i noticed that their drives are 5400rpm drives. any experience with 7200rpm drives?
The drives that I used are 7200 RPM drives, so they do work (and still work as of right now)
And to add… any experience or change this might work with SSD?
i suppose if you had the money for it then it would probably fly, but if money isnt an option why not go with a Synology DS-1512+ (thats what i use for iSCSi with vSphere ESXi lab). what are you looking to use your storage for?
if money is not an issue then go for it, but if thats the case (depending on what youre looking to do) go with a Synology DS-1512+ i think that would be a serious configuration
Hi Alfredo,
Interesting tuto.
I’m thinking on using it in my attempt to replace a defaulty HD#2. This is much simplier than your entire process.
One clarification please, as you inserted a new dirve in bay #2, did you pre-partition and pre-format it ?
If yes, what were the details ?
Tanguy
send drive was right out of the box plugged in, so it was unpartitioned and unformatted, the device took care of it all
Thanks for the clarification. I did delete all existing partitions and the devide did it all by it self. Thanks for the help. Much appreciated.
Tgy
i had the same question but i realized the device wanted to do it itself so it wouldnt have mattered, it still would have wanted to delete/partition/reformat it.
Iomega StorCenter ix2-200
firmware version 2.1.42.18967
Following your steps I replaced the 500GB disk 2 of a ix2-200 raid level 1 with a 3 TB WD red and booted it but when I go to drive management there is not a option to set it to rebuild, so I guess it´s doing it automatically but I have no idea if this is what´s happening. It only report disk 1 with 466 GB and disk 2 with 2,7 TB and a red alert for the disk 2.
In the log there is a new message which says data is available but a error has been detected.
How I know the system is rebuilding disk 1 in the new disk 2.
The ix2-200 has filled about 90% of it´s 500 MB store capacity so how much time do you guess it will take to rebuild ?
If I not erase the data, after the rebuild is done and replace disk 1 also, will the system report 2,5 TB free ?
look at the status, if i recall correctly the rebuild takes forever, it took almost 2 days for me just and no data was on it yet
Hi Robert, It turns out I am attempting the same process with the same drives as your report. My drive 2 failed so I am replacing both with 3TB starting with drive 2. It sounds like am at the same step where you asked your question, drive is in and recognized with the Red Circle/X. “1 New Drive has been added to your Iomega StorCenter device”
How did it work out for you? any advice? Thanks.
what does the red circle give you for details, see if you can format it/prepare it. was the unit off when you added the drive?
Just went to the local micro store to get info about replacing drives for my Storcenter…BUST.
Great info here. Thanks for taking the time to figure this out and publish so others could benefit. Going out tomorrow to get two new 2TB drives and attempt a swap out.
Will update after…or during.
Thanks again.
you are welcome, it seems this post was sitting for a while without any comments then comments started coming in. glad i can give something back to the internet after all the ‘edumacation’ it has provided me
I did the exact procedure with success using Seagate ST3000DM001.
https://iomega-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30797/kw/compatible%20hdd/related/1#dskcaution
The procedure work flawlessly. I would prefer not having to copy back all my data (remove data prior of the operation will make the precess faster ?)
But I’m now having a 2.71To usable RAID1 space.
I would have to make a modification (add some kind of fan) because temperature when copying data back stays around 57C, with the internal fan ~900RPM.
im still using the stock fan, as my data once written is mostly static i am safe (i think) just letting the one included fan do its job.
seems like the stats on page views in December have gone up – i guess upgrading space/drives is something people like to do during the holiday season
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i imagine people are just a little behind you and we’re all doing the same thing a little later
, I had originally set to mirror, then filled it and set it to not mirror. Now I’m full again and was considering an external through usb or another NAS when i came across this article and now thanks to you, I’ve decided to just upgrade the drives. Many thanks and Happy Holidays
thanks for the holiday wishes. hopefully yours will be well too.
Came across your article which searching for why my ix2-200 HDD are going in idle and making noise, even though the settings I set is for 1 hour.
Article is interesting though it didn’t address my issue I love reading it.
Thanks.
it may have something to do with the types of drives that they are, the green drives typically behave that way
I’ve successfully replaced one hard drive of my StorCenter. Yay! Before I pulled the other, I hooked the original drive up to my laptop. Nothing. Said the drive needed to be formatted. Any idea why? Is there certain software needed to see the contents of the drive once it’s pulled out of the StorCenter?
Now I’m afraid to pull the other original hard drive from the StorCenter.
Any advice would be greatly appreciated!
Jonny O
theres a couple of things i can think of right of the top of my head. first of all the drives aren not formatted in FAT or FAT32 or NTFS or any other readable file system that Windows can read. If you tried to mount it on a MAC which used HFS it would probably still not able to read it. If i recall correctly, since the kernel is *nix based it is probably in ext3 or ext4 file system, you could try to mount it on a *nix machine but changes are due to the fact of the disk layout (and if you have it setup as a RAID drive it will probably not work). This is by design since iOmega made it this way… else this tutorial may have not been needed since it would have been easy to copy some files from the boot/mbr sector and reversed engineered it much easier; by implementing this dependency iOmega essentially ensures the great majority of users will just purchase the drives from them.
Thank you for this post. I’ve wanted to increase the size of the storage here for some time as larger drives have become less expensive. The failure of one of the drives forced my hand. The cost of a new larger storcenter was prohibitive as compared to the cost of a couple of new 2tb drives. It was a long process to move all the data to another 1tb drive, gradulally replace and then rebuild the array as per your instructions, but I am now in the process of restoring the data back into a new 1.8tb capacity. Thanks!
i am still glad this post continues to help others. i think when these drives start failing i will look into the 3tb drives (which hopefully by then will have come down in price).
Alfredo, how is the noise of the Green drives compared with the old Seagate ones ?
i think they were more or less the same level. although when they did spin down and re-spinned back up they do the usual noise increase you would expect. they are in my basement though so i don’t exactly recall, i apologize for not being any more helpful
its quieter but not significantly, keep in mind the green drives tend to spin down when not in use.
I tried to replicate your steps but both of my drives died. So I have replaced both and turned the unit back on. Will that work? I still have both older drives, but I am pretty sure both are DOA.
you need at least one original drive. the reason behind it is that it contains the specific boot partition to load. see if you can get it to work at least once more, once that is loaded and you can erase/format/prepare the new drive then it will work but simply putting two new drives will not do anything and will hang with the blinking lights forever.
Ok, so I can put the original boot drive in (drive one) with the new drive. I get into the console and it will not let me change the RAID. Also, i cannot see the new drive. So can I erase drive one at that point or is there something else I can do?
break the raid but keep the original intact, then rebuild it let me know if that doesnt work
Hi Alfredo,
Thanks for the post. One question: When you achieved 3.64TB at step 7, was that space all empty? Or does this procedure preserve your original data?
I know you said that you had backed up your data so that it would not be important if the procedure succeeded or failed. But in the end, was it necessary to copy your data from the backup, or was it already there?
Thanks,
Owen
I don’t recall as it was a while ago but I’m pretty sure all data is destroyed for the array to build properly.
This is great stuff, my only question is lets say you go down the path and REFORMAT your drives and get the wLOD. I’m assuming even after following instructions on the site and using the DriveFWUpdate utlility there is no way to recover the drives back?
if you reformat the original drive then youve succeeded in blowing out the boot partition and files so it will be WoL and SOL, i suggest plugging in an used drive and mirroring them, then pulling it back so you have something to rebuild should it fail in the future
Thanks for this article and all the replies/responses. Drive 2 on my Iomega StorCenter ix2-200 2TB unit died. The fan is dead too. Been running the unit as 2TB RAID.Mirror.
I bought a replacement 2TB HD – if I am to understand all said here, replacing the drive is a simple as powering down, remove old Drive 2, slide in new Drive in Drive 2 slot and power up – the new drive will get formatted and eventually the data on drive 1 will be mirrored/migrated to the new Drive 2 – is this a correct synopsis?
Thanks much,
Jim.
you have to manually trigger a rebuild but yes.
Hi Alfredo
Thanks for your step-by-step guide on the upgrade.
After a year, my #1 1TB drive went south, never to return (sounded like it was spinning up but with an awful clacking sound as the heads try to move). I decided to upgrade the whole system with 2 new 3TB WD Red NAS drives and followed your instructions, which worked perfectly. I tried your suggestion, skipping the second RAID 1 rebuild. This is what I done:
1. At your step 4, just after the I inserted the second new drive, I went into the drive management page and it already started rebuilding the RAID 1 on the second new drive (was still showing 0% completed). I changed the RAID mode to RAID 0 (stripping). Got the warning about data lost and continued. It took about a minute or two to make the switch. After that completed, the total capacity showed 5.8 TB (2 x 3TB – FS overhead). IOW I didn’t wait for the RAID 1 rebuild in your step 4.
2. Now I proceeded to your step 7. I went back and changed the RAID mode o RAID 1, same warning, again a minute or 2 spinning wheel, and the NAS reported 2.8 TB and indicated that the RAID 1 is busy rebuilding. Done
I have checked my unit’s temperature before and after the upgrade. Before, while in use, it was constant at 57 C and in idle mode, it will go down to 52C. With the new drives 58 C under stress, the fan will kick in and it will drop to 57C. They haven’t gone idle yet since I installed them yesterday
BTW, I’m impressed with these WD Red NAS drives performance and they are DEAD QUITE compared to the original Seagate Barracudas! I have to check for the blue LED to confirm they are writing as I restored my data. They come with a 3 year warranty too. The drive model and specs:
WD30EFRX SATA 6 Gb/s 3.5 Inch IntelliPower 3 TB 64 MB
With regards to the Owen’s question: yes all data is lost when you switch RAID mode to adjust for the new size. In RAID 1 your data on disk contains redundancy information to enable the RAID system to rebuild missing data on the fly in case of a disk failure. When you remove the RAID 1 protection, the underlying sector structure of the data on disk change and hence you loose all data on the disk. This obviously excludes the boot partition of the NAS system. Your NAS config is still intact (users, ip address, etc.) however any shares you created besides the factory shares are also lost.
Thanks
JJ
always good to hear someone took what i did and made it their own
Thanks for the great write up! I used a slight variation to this process with great results. I lost my number one drive while running RAID 1. I purchased two 2 TB Western Digital RED drives ( http://www.wdc.com/global/products/specs/?driveID=1086&language=1 ) to use as replacements for the original smaller 1 TB drives.
Here is the process that I followed…
Iomega StorCenter ix2-200
Version: 3.2.6.21659
1) Backup all data onto another disk drive.
2) Power down and replaced the failed drive 1 with a new drive.
3) Power up and logon as Administrator.
4) Navigate to the “Drive Management” screen and validated that the system is rebuilding the mirror. (The rebuild is indicated by a little animated graphic, if I recall correctly. The System Status page also indicates a rebuild in progress. I did nothing to trigger the rebuild; it was automatic.)
5) Once the rebuild is complete, power down and replaced the old drive 2 with a new drive.
6) Power up and logon as Administrator.
7) Navigate to the “Drive Management” screen, and click on the “Settings” link. (At this point, the system should have already started a rebuild.)
8) In the “Drive Management Settings” dialog, choose “None” from the “Protection” drop down list box.
9) Click the “Apply” button.
10) Acknowledged the warning dialog box indicating all data will be lost.
11) Once the conversion to “None” finishes, go back into “Drive Management Settings” dialog and choose “Mirror (RAID 1)”.
12) Click the “Apply” button. (This triggers another mirror rebuild, but you now have all your drive capacity.)
13) After the rebuild completes, copy data back onto the NAS.
again, like i said, its always nice to see someone took what i did and made it their own.
Alfredo i would really appreciate if you or any other helper can tell, array specifications in a healthy ix2-200 NAS, since my drive got infected and data loss may result in job loss. HDDs are 2x2TB black. Thanks in advance.
you look at the system for disk health, not sure if thats what you are looking for
First of all thanks for answering Fred, hope u dont bother being called like that.
I dont want to make a mess of a explanation, but the thing is, that my NAS array collapsed. Got same storage model and the disk im trying to work with got same specifications of what you mounted on NAS.
In order to recover my data, i need to gather some info about the array, this is blocksize and start sector. Since my MBR got modified no software can gather that info from my HDDs, ive worked with RAID-0 to maximize available space, and now 3.6 TB of work is unnavailable.
I ve already searched blogs, IT forums and read lots about ix2-200 but came up with nothing of what im needing. Its a must for NAS Data recovery, the info im asking for, so i may post an instructive reply if someone s eager to help.
In order to do it u need a desktop comp that supports RAID and raid recovery software, like NAS recovery tool or else RAID recovery tool. RISK FREE, i can provide them.
Thanks in advance for any handy user with helping will. This data will be useful for ages.
Well as it turns out, my primary drive wasn’t dead after all. It was the secondary drive.
After some searching, I was able to find a compatible drive and bingo, I was back in business. Thanks for the tips, very helpful.
I do have a related question. At one point, can’t remember where I saw it, there was a list of supported drives supplied by iOMEGA. I have yet to find that again. Do you happen to know where I could find that list? I would like to have it for future reference.