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.
full randomness, mostly IT stuff, but not 100% guaranteed 
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?
Hello Robert and RangBtsan,
Same question here. How did you move on? How did you get it working?
Kind regards,
Hans
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
Hi JJ,
I am about to go the same route with the 3TB WD RED.
Could please let me know your firmware version and if it is a Cloud version.
Many thanks,
Aleks
it is a cloud version. fw version 3.2.6.21659
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.
Followed all the steps (except my original defective drive was in bay 1), when changing the protection setting from Raid 1 to Raid 0, how long should it take to complete? I have approx 500GB of data (original drives were 1TB), After replacing the drive in Bay 1 with a 2TB drive, all worked fine, except my objective was to then also change the drive in bay 2 to a 2TB drive to achieve increased storage. After doing so and completing a successful rebuild (took about 3 hours), the issue was the system only recognized 1TB. I then proceeded to the ‘Drive Mngt Settings’ screen, as my goal was to have the 2TB recognized by the system (yes I had backed up the data). After switching to None (Raid 0), it now seems like the IX2 is stuck on “Processing…”, been like this for 5 hours. The IX2 pretty much has a solid white light…an occasional blue short blink every hour or so. IS this normal?
i hope you didnt get the WLoD issue, did this go away?
Hola Alfredo, mi IX2-200 aun sigue con problemas, es prácticamente imposible leer videos desde un equipo en la red, y también copiar archivos, creo debe ser el firmware, tienes por casualidad un link para bajarlo? Ya subí la velocidad de mi red, y conecté directo al PC. Saludos y gracias por tu ayuda.
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.
I attempted to upgrade my own iX2-200 1tb drives to 3tb, but couldn’t get anywhere with it. It never allows me to break the mirror. I took out one drive the no 2 disk first and replaced with the 3tb but blinked blue for some time and later return to red light reporting disk failure. I tested the 3TB drive somewhere else and it works perfect.
At one point I bought Acronis image to mirror the content on my 1tb to 3tb, after a successful task it say I have to create Linux boot for it to work, which I don’t have a clue on how to do it. Inserted the 3tb to Iomega but failed completely with white flashing light.
At the moment I haven’t achieved my goal, I needed more space for my virtualisation lab. I am using the 3tb on one of my ESXI host at the moment and with FREENAS 8.3, both I am knee to use my Iomega beautiful storage.
did you do a two step upgrade? as in – upgrade 1 drive with the original drive connected, then once that new drive is prepped, power it off and replace the original drive with the second new drive?
I am in fact glad to read this website posts which carries lots of useful information, thanks
for providing these data.
glad it helped another person.
Hi,
Here is the URL for the supported drived.
https://lenovo-na-en.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/30797
Hope this helps
Rob
Hi,
My own problem (so far) is that I needed to replace a bad drive. The drive that came in it is no longer sold anywhere as it is a green 5400 1 TB seagate. Since i could not get a match for drive two, i bought 2 matched seagate 1TB 7200 drives.
Iomega states very clearly NOT to use mismatched drives but what was i to do?
In the meantime (last night) I decided to update the firmware as I waited for the drivews to arrive, and now 12 hours later have the flashing white light.
My question is: how long do I allow the flashing white light to continue to blink before pulling the plug (literally and figuratively?)
I have tried to physically power it down and it will not, i can not access the management software via a browser.
I have important data on the drive and don’t want to loose it.
Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.
Thank you
Rob Bloomfield
there is a comment i saw in here from someone who plugged the hdd to their laptop and moved data out of it. i have not tried this but i assume it would work. the key is that you NEED to have at least one of the original drives since it contains the boot partition and files so that the new drive can get these files too. its sort of a pain but to replace both drives you effectively need to do a single drive upgrade twice… if you replace both drives it wont have the boot partition and files needed and will never function. there is a way to ‘hack’ it and unencrypt the partition to sort of manually create this but i have not tried it.
so RAID 1 is mirroring. How did you get 4TB with two 2-TB drives? At most you should have gotten 2TB useable space minus overhead. RAID 0 is not an array for protection, it’s merely striping across two disks for performance enhancement. Just curious.
that was a typo on my part. it is mirrored. good catch
My upgrade went a lot smoother. I had a failure on drive1. When the 2Tb WD Red drives arrived, I replaced the failed drive. I let the system rebuild the raid (670 GB) which took about 5 hours. Then I powered down and replace drive2. I let that rebuild about 3 hours. Then it showed that it had the additional capacity but utilizing it like there were 2 1TB drives instead of 2 2TB drives. I restarted and it is using all the capacity.
Ix2-200 version: 3.2.6.21659 with 2: 2TB WD Red drives capacity: 1.8 TB Used: 673GB Available 1.14 TB. It is also a lot quieter.
im looking into these for my next upgrade http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/nas-drives/nas-hdd/?sku=ST4000VN000
Did you lose all the data in the process? I’m in the exact same situation: disk 1 failure, bought 2 x 2TB WB Red. Ready for a swap now, but worried about not having backed up (I have no disks big enough hanging about as about 850GB would need to be copied)… How did it go for you?
If you have the Iomega set as raid 1 (mirrored) then replace the bad drive with new drive and let it rebuild, once that’s done power off and remove old drive, power on to ensure raid has mirrored everything (even boot partition) to new drive and if that is good then replace old drive with 2nd need drive so end result is both new drives and have it rebuild the array
If you have other raid configuration or if you are paranoid and want to go the long route you can do the below
1- plug one of the new drives on computer (well call it drive 1)
2- format drive 1 on your computer
3- copy contents of existing Iomega to drive 1
4- once existing Iomega drive is empty
5- plug in second new drive (well call it drive 2) to Iomega
6- let it rebuild with no data (it will copy the bootable partition)
7- once Iomega is rebuilt – power it off
8- remove the existing Iomega (old) drive
9- power on Iomega to ensure it boots without the old drive
10- if it boots up with just drive 1 then it sees then boot partition
11- plug in old Iomega drive to computer
12- format old Iomega drive to computer (NTFS or alike)
13- copy contents from drive 1 to newly formatted Iomega drive
14- power off Iomega
15- plug in drive 1 (now that all data has been moved out of it) to Iomega
16- power on Iomega
17- ensure it still boots
18- rebuild array
19- profit
Alfredo, thanks a lot for all the advice.
It worked, no data has been lost, raid1 array copied – all good! Now I only need to figure out how to make the unit use all of the new drives capacity (restart didn’t do the job, like it did for the guy above…).
But I can always copy files onto one of the old drives, reformat to raid0 (like you suggested), reformat back to raid1 and copy files back. Unless you have some other suggestions…
Once more – thank you! Yours was the best/most comprehensive advice I could find anywhere online…
i’d be willing to guess the answer lies in the storage configuration of the NAS try going to your NAS website
https://%5Breplace_with_your_iomega_IP_address%5D/drives.html?cat=storage and look around — unfortunately i may be overthinking of other suggestions and I’m drawing a blank, but I’m glad my suggestions worked out for you.
Almost two years since you wrote original article, and believe me, it still helps… 🙂
After finding that i’m at 90% capacity on my ix2-200 in RAID 1 (1tb available), I went through the usual options (new NAS – never liked this one, noisy, slow, and I could never get the cloud services to work properly, but it was cheap and it still works flawlessly – vs upgrade HDD in this one). I’m still pondering a synology or something, but it’s nice to know that if I go for the upgrade path, I know what I’m doing, thanks to this article and it’s comments.
Again, thank you. This is what internet is all about.
Regards,
V.
it makes me feel good inside that people are still using this article to enhance/upgrade/expand the capacity of this device. i will be upgrading my hdds within the next few months to these http://www.seagate.com/internal-hard-drives/nas-drives/nas-hdd/?sku=ST4000VN000
Alfredo, that’s one easy and great instruction ! Thanks a lot.
I have one question – do I have to create a volume on the drive before inserting (first to bay 2) ? Or can the whole drive be “unallocated space” as windows is calling it ?
it should not matter, the Iomega OS will want to reformat it regardless.
I followed the procedure and it worked flawlessly. there was an extra step that i had to do, since i had data on the iomega that i wanted. After step 2, I took the drive i removed and put it into a WD mybook case (which previously had a 500gb drive which i removed). I then connected the mybook to my system, initialized it and copied all the data from the iomega onto it. I then proceeded to step 3. When all was said and done, i coped the data back from the mybook to the iomega. Thanks for the info, mate.
someone saw my typo. it is mirrored so its not drive x2 – raid space. its drive x1 mirrored.
another question for the people who have commented this, us anyone using the iSCSi feature of this? i use a synology ds+1512 for my virtual lab and have always used this for other stuff but i wanted to expand my ability to do a live vm migration from datastore (synology) –> datastore (iomega) but im wondering on the performance.
I don’t think that this has been asked but I have a non-cloud edition drive. Will it recognize 3TB drives? I installed one and it looks like it only is seeing it as a 2TB. I know some people will update their drives to cloud edition software using methods such as
http://www.technopat.net/forum/ssd-flash-ve-sabit-diskler/2790-upgrading-iomega-ix2-200-cloud-edition.html?langid=1
but I’m a bit wary to do that. Any help would be appreciated. Thanks
I don’t have the slightest idea on if it will support it. id like to say yes but your sources of discovery would be the same as mine (google). best of luck and if you figure out an answer let us all know please.
Alfredo… thank you very much for the article and responses to the people that posted. I just wanted to let you know that after I replaced the 1TB drives in my ix-200 twice with Leveno, I became very frustrated and was desperate for solution. I came across your posting a went through everyone’s comments and responses. By the time that I was done reading, I had placed an order with Tiger Direct and two new Seagate 2TB NAS drives were on their way to my house. Let me tell, these drives are INCREDIBLE! They are super silent! With the original drives, the noise was so loud I thought the heads were chiseling the information. The NAS drives… SUPER silent.
Again, thank you for the information. It has been all very helpful! I know have two new 2TB drives with Raid1 and all my information returned to it’s proper place.
Thanks, Alfredo, a very good article. I had upgraded my iX2-200 Cloud Edition to 2x3Tb drives RAID1 at the start of the year but it would have gone a lot faster if I had found your process then.
You mentioned that you might upgrade to 4Tb drives. I did that today and the procedure went just fine.
My family have been filling the NAS with their data so I decided I would install 2 x WD RED NAS 4Tb drives. I followed your instructions and the drives have installed. The Drive Management page now shows Total Drive Size 7.28Tb, Capacity 3.62Tb, Used 6.13Mb, Available 3.62Tb. The RAID1 build is in progress and should finish sometime tomorrow then I will restore the data.
Thanks again for the info.
Alfredo, Thanks for the article. I have an ix2-200 Cloud edition, firmware 3.2.6.21659. I just had one of the 1 TB drives fail. So I went out and purchased 2 WD30EFRX 3 TB rives (the kind used in the post by JJ – March 5, 2013 at 1:23 PM). I switched out Disk 2 (the bad disk) and replaced it with the new 3 TB drive, plugged it in, allowed it to boot up, and went into the management software through the URL in a browser (the StorCenter Software shows the disk “unavailable). By this time the red blinking light was on.
I went to system which shows the white X in the red circle and a statement “Storage failed and some data loss may have occurred.” The graphic is no longer there but instead is a little box that says “processing…”
I next went into Storage and then into drive management which shows the following:
Protection: None (RAID 0)
Write Caching: Always enabled
Periodic consistency check: Disabled
Total Drive Size:3.64 TB
Capacity:0 B
Used:0 B
Available: 0 B
It shows both drives in the graphic, neither with the x inside the red circle.
When you click on settings you get the popup box that shows:
Protection: (None (RAID 0)
Disk Write Caching:
Enable periodic consistency check
Drive Size
Drive 1 ST31000520AS, CC38 931.51 GB
Drive 2 WDC_WD30EFRX-68AX9N0, 80.00A80 2.73 TB
When I try to have it go into RAID 1 n the pulldown menu I get another box stating
Existing data must be deleted to change the drive configuration.
Check this box to continue.
When I click on the box, I get another message telling me
The sizes of the selected drives are too different to include in the same Storage Pool.
IN the meantime, the red light blinks merrily away, every now and then the blue light blinks but I never see the white light blinking showing me data protection is being reconstructed. Got any suggestions?
are you sure both drives didnt go simultaneously?
I found my problem. The Settings Protection screen gives you a pulldown menu with 3 options: None, None (Raid 0) and Mirror (Raid 1). Given the Iomega would not allow me to use None (Raid 0) or Mirror (Raid 1), I opted for None. Lo and behold, it began the rebuild on the 3 TB drive. It took 7.25 hours but it worked. I then removed the original 1 TB drive and inserted the 2 TB drive and did a Raid 1 install. Everything worked. I now have a 2.78 TB, Raid 1, super quiet, Iomega NAS. Pretty sweet. Thanks for posting this article. Oh, and BTW, my ix2-200 CE was still under warranty and Lenovo is now sending me a new 1 TB drive. I have an external case so I will probably tie it into the NAS for an additional 1 TB of storage. 🙂
Hello , after a long fight with an IX2 -200 Cloud Edition which threw the White Led death, and presumably thousands of possible faults, I can only disassemble and power and reset buttons replaced with new , as it seems anyone is stuck . I bought a new drive model .
The drawback is that they are now formatted without RAID , and it is almost impossible to read videos from my Smart Tv theme before he could perform without problems , and now the videos are stuck and impossible to see them.
Does anyone have a similar problem? Does anyone know of a solution? .
Moreover, I managed to install the driver on the HDD from scratch, without having one of the original discs ( after fighting telephoned people Iomega no results service , since there is no service for devices that are not in warranty, abuse by the brand as FORCED to buy a juevo team , rather than explain that with a few simple steps you can rebuild the empty disks lol)
I hope someone knows the issue of why so slow I see the videos, or recommend me some settings , I’m not interested in mirror disks , since I have everything backed up and are just movies and music.
If something serves my experience when installing the OS disks.
Greetings and congratulations to all who have posted and really helped …
If anything, I served my experience installing the OS when disks are dead, and who also help inspire this post …
mira amigo, estaba tratando de leer tu commentatio pero hay un poco que no puede entender, por favor prodrias escribirlo en castellano/espanol? me gustaria poder entender bien lo que decias. ojala que lo vuelvas a poner pero esta vez en tu idioma nativo. chao y buena suerte.
Hola AlfredoMarchena, disculpa mi Inglés, pero traté de mantener el respeto por el idioma original del post.
Lo que quise decir fué:
Después de una larga lucha con un IX2 -200 Cloud Edition afectado con el Led Blanco de la Muerte, con miles de posibles diagnósticos de fallo, sólo me queda desmontar (sacando soldadura y todo) los botones de encendido y reset, reemplazandolos por otros nuevos, ya que al parecer a nadie se le ha ocurrido que esta pueda ser una falla física. (La unidad se queda pestañeando el Led Blanco y después de unos segundos se apaga, sin activar los HDD)
Ante esto, tuve que comprar una nueva unidad IX2-200 para descartar posibilidades.
El inconveniente es que ahora tengo formateados los discos sin RAID , y es casi imposible leer los videos desde mi Smart TV, cosa que antes podía realizar sin problemas, pero ahora los videos se congelan y es imposible verlos.
¿Alguien tiene un problema similar? ¿Alguien sabe de una solución?.
Por otra parte, me las arreglé para instalar el controlador o sistema operativo en un HDD formateado desde cero, sin tener uno de los discos originales (después de luchar por teléfono con la gente de Servicios Iomega sin resultados, ya que no hay servicio técnico para los dispositivos que no están en garantía, lo cuál es el colmo del abuso de la marca que te FUERZAN a comprar un equipo nuevo, en lugar de explicar que con unos pocos pasos sencillos se pueden regenerar los discos vacíos jojojojo) Me costó varios intentos y muchas horas en internet, pero aprendí como y es bastante simple…
Espero que alguien que sepa del tema de por qué es tan lenta la lectura de los videos me ayude, o me recomiendan alguna configuración, les cuento que no me interesa tener los discos espejados, ya que lo tengo todo respaldado y son sólo películas y música.
Si algo sirve mi experiencia al instalar el sistema operativo a discos vírgenes, encantado de poder ayudar.
Saludos y felicitaciones a todos los que han publicado y realmente ayudaron a otros usuarios…
me podrias mandar los ‘screen-shots’ de el menu (la parte de raid) storage–>drive management–>settings
Alfredo, como puedo enviarte los screenshots?
you should take a look these / deberias ver esto
http://www.synology.com/en-us/products/overview/DS214play
i dont have this model but i use a DSM-1512+ & i can say with confidence Synologys products are great/ no tengo ese modelo pero tengo un DSM-1512+ y puedo decir con bastante confidencia que los productos de Synology son excellentes
link from Edward Haletky where he links back to this website: http://www.itworld.com/virtualization/329076/vsphere-upgrade-saga-tertiary-storage-iomega-ix2-200-upgrade?page=0,0
Les comento que si necesitan ingresar a la unidad Iomega IX2-200 por primera vez para realizar ajustes en verdad es bastante simple.
NOTA: Si han olvidado la clave maestra de acceso, solo basta que una vez encendida la unidad, presionen el botón de “reset” en la parte posterior de la unidad un par de segundos y dejen que la unidad se apague por completo, eliminando la password.
Ahora volvamos a los pasos iniciales.
1.Conecten su computador directamente a la unidad por cable de red, y enciendan el IX2-200, al cabo de unos minutos la unidad enciende completamente el sistema operativo.
2.Una vez encendida y conectada por cable de red a nuestro computador, deben ir al “Centro de Redes y Recursos Compartidos” en Windows. (Inicio/PAnel de Control/Centro de Redes y Recursos Compartidos)
3.Ahora deben cambiar el estado de la red de un perfil “público” a “Privado”, de otra forma no se puede acceder al equipo, para lo que iremos a la opción “PERSONALIZAR” y cambiaremos el estado a “PRIVADA”, denle a Siguiente, aceptar y listo.
4.Para saber la IP e ingresar, vuelvan al Centro de Redes y Recursos Compartidos y vayan donde dice “VER EL MAPA COMPLETO”
5.Se mostrarán las unidades conectadas a la red, solo deben hacer click con el botón derecho del mouse sobre el ícono del IX2-200 y revisar las opciones para ver la IP del equipo, incluso hay un acceso para ingresar directamente.
6. Ahora abran el “INTERNET EXPLORER” (no funciona bien en Google Chrome), escriban o copien directamente la dirección IP y listo!!! ya pueden acceder para modificar las configuraciones en su unidad.
7.Recuerden revisar todas las configuraciones de usuarios y password para poder acceder directamente por la red y reestablecer los accesos vía internet sin problemas.
8.Recuerden además que cada vez que reinician la unidad IX2-200, esta cambia la IP, por lo que deberán nuevamente ir al Centro de Redes para verificar cuál es la IP actual y poder acceder.
Saludos y cuando recuerde algún otro tema relacionado postearé… Recuerden compartir conocimientos, me habría ahorrado varias horas de frustración por la red buscando las soluciones, ya que Iomega no ayuda en verdad a sus clientes, y hay mucha información incompleta en la red…
Hello,
Is there a minimum version of the firmware that is required? Mine runs on 2.1.42.18967.
Kind regards, Hans
required for what? I’m sorry i didn’t understand your question
HI, Also my drives failed in the Iomega IX-200. That was for the third time so i bought a synology to use the drives I had upgraded priviously. Now I want to use the old IX-200 for some minor files. But the old drives are not availeable any more how can i configure the drives to use in the IX-2000
do you have at least one of the drives that came with it (the original ones)
Alfredo, you’re the boss.
My Iomega 2x-200 2TB had one drive dead.(#2 seems to be the most common) I thought it was destined for the scrap heap til I read this page. I followed your directions and successfully replaced my 2- 1GB Seagate disks for 2-2GB WD Green. One difference though, It wouldn’t let me change from Raid 1 to Raid 0 without physically deleting all data from the disk. I had already backed up before I started so I did that in Win Explorer and then it worked fine. Just waiting now for mirror rebuild.
Thank you for taking the time to post and thanks to all the commenters on this page.
Geo.
yes you’re right, you wouldn’t be able to change raid configuration without losing the data as it will essentially erase and format and build the array.
thanks for the kid words amigo. i went through the same pain at one point and this was my way to help others who may run into a similar case.
No… I had to delete all the files myself. The unit wouldn’t do it and it wouldn’t change the Raid until I did. I think I have an older 2x-200. My firmware is the same as Hans 2.1.42.18967 and I believe that the StorCenter software is an older version. I don’t have any screens that look like the one you posted above.
At any rate it worked and I am presently copying my data back.
Thanx again,
Geo.
Approaching March 2014 and this post still helped me to do a disk upgrade from 2x1T to 2x2T in my 2x-200 (firmware 2.1.42.18967), congrats to Alfredo and all whom have added info and their experiences. I like to mention few things which differed a little bit from other experiences.
First a remark, if the new disk(s) are not empty (no partition, no data), the rebuild of the RAID is not automatic, it requires a validation in the disk management section to allow erasing data, otherwise, if they are empty, then the rebuild is launch automatically.
Secondly, it happened a weird behavior when I reached step 7 (switch back to RAID 1), after validation, the browser was showing a pending request but nothing seemed started. I waited approx 8 hours, but the status still mentioned “A request is being prepared to be executed” or something similar. I tried then to shutdown the device, but it seemed to be stuck on some endless process. I eventually unplug the plug (which I don’t like to do) and when I rebooted it was still mentioning the same message. However, after asking again to switch to RAID 1, after a few seconds, I had the confirmation that the request has been accepted and that the RAID was being rebuilt.
Third thing, when I have switched to RAID 0 (and accepted to erase data), it also erased all the users and settings except the name and IP config of the NAS. Not a big deal, but if yout have multiples users shared folders and associated access right, it might be onerous to recreate them (especially if you did not take note before the process).
Thank again,
David
the ‘secondly’ part was something i did not experience but i find it useful for other people should they have an experience like this – i think your comment will help them address it if it creeps up on them.
as far as third thing – yes i was under the impression that that was a risk, you can backup the configuration file but all the users home folders and stuff will have to be rebuild after breaking the raid (changing the raid)
Very helpful posts. I had one drive give out and successfully upgraded the system to 2 new 4 TB HDs. It worked fine for about 3 months until I got a red blink error with the server unable to reach either disks now. I put back the original factory disk (the one that worked before) and it booted up fine. Do you have any recommendations how to save the info from the the new hard drives?
Do you have any idea how I could save files from the hard drives after system boot-up is compromised? I learned my lesson in a hard way, RAID 1 will not give you protection in this system if the server cannot boot up for whatever reason. My upgraded drives are functional but there appear to be a software issue to boot up the disks. As I said, I have the original disk, it boots up fine, so the server seem to be working. I just need to recover some files from the upgraded disks. I appreciate any advice!!
If you plug these disks in a PC you won’t see anything. This is because the inner system used by this NAS is Linux based. I believe if you look for a Windows’s driver/utility to mount ext4 (Linux) disks, you should be able to retrieve your data. To be honest, I never did that but I know this is one way to proceed.
I used linux VM on widows as well as booted my desktop to ubuntu. The problem is I don’t see the files even on the currently boot-able disk.
alfredomarchena;
I have a problem with my iomega-ix2-200 in the RAID 1 (1 TB). This is a Segate Barracuda LP (5400 RPM). Can I replace it with a 1 Tb 7,200 RPM of other manufacturer?
you should be but look at the online forums for what drives are better suited by the type of workload youre looking to do. one thing i would say is stay away from the ‘green’ drives
I am replacing my drives with 2 2TB drives.
I followed the steps and switched one drive and let things rebuild. I then took out the other old drive and put new one in and got an email that things are rebuilding. However, I cannot access the web console anymore after switching this second drive? Has anyone had this issue?
it seems the files for the webconsole are on the other drive, what if you swap order of the drives? it needs to rebuild
plug it into a desktop and boot with a gparted iso and see how the drive is split. try and delete all partitions and apply changes. also worth noting that if the disk was intended for mac/osx the partition table is sometimes gpt and some systems cant read it
Hi, I’m running an Iomega StorCenter ix4-200d 2.1.42.18967. Drive 4 failed. Purchased 2 3TB WD Red as I saw someone else had done this ealier and thought they were successful. I keep getting the red x in any configuration or process I’ve tried, using your instructions. Says disk unusable. I’ve tried it in bay 4, bay 2 and bay 2 with just the original disk 1 and the new Red in bay 2, with no other disks in the drive. I’ve reconstructed the drive several times, using each of configurations above. Appears I’m on the latest firmware, so I don’t see some of the configuration options that the cloud version has…. Any thoughts?
It would appear from everything I’m reading I may need to format these larger disks. Is that correct? Can I just format them as Fat32 or do they have to be formatted with Linx? Anyway to format them with Linx from a Windows server or desktop?
yes that is correct
Hi Alfredo
Thank you very much for your directions. I managed the upgrade vom 1TB to 4TB without any Problems, everything works fine. It just took me about 1 hour of work and 24 hours later the raid was rebuild. I made a backup of my data before the upgrade, so I had not to worry about loosing data.
While i was searching the Internet I found the following interesting link, which describes how to set up an ix2-200 without any original disk, in case both original disks are dead. Could be very helpful too.
http://artishow.info/index.php?post/2012/07/19/How-to-restore-the-firmware-on-Iomega-ix2-200-%28and-get-a-Cloud-Edition%29
Thanx again
Oli
thanks for the URL i will be sure to post it so people have alternatives to this issue.
With havin so much content do you ever run into any problems of plagorism or copyright
violation? My blog has a lot of completely unique content I’ve either created myself or
outsourced but it looks like a lot of it is popping it up all over the web without my agreement.
Do you know any methods to help reduce content from
being ripped off? I’d certainly appreciate it.
you are referring to website content right? if so then if they are ‘stealing content’ then complain or send them a cease and desist letter (look online for templates) like http://thompsonhall.com/cease-desist-letter-template-example-sample-forms/
I follow the instructions given in the original post up to the point: “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.”
I am confused at the point where you changed the protection level to raid 0 in an effort to get it to recognize the larger capacity. What data gets erased? I have 2 good original drives but just want increased capacity and do not wish to lose any data. Could you explain in more detail what you are doing at that point?
Thanks for the marvelous posting! I actually enjoyed reading it, you
will be a great author. I will ensure that I bookmark your blog and will come back down the road.
I want to encourage yourself to continue your great job, have a nice weekend!
Hi Alfredo. I’ve done everything ok until (upgraded my storage capacity) i change set from raid 1 to raid 0. It is taking for ever to process this. How long did it take for you? it’s been almost 8 hours.
Español:
Hola Alfredo. He realizado todo bien (aumento de capacidad del ix2) hasta que llego al cambio de raid 1 a raid 0. El sistema lleva ya casi 8 horas “procesando” este cambio. ¿Cuánto demoró este proceso aproximadamente en tu caso? Creo haber leído que demora 24 horas aprox.
Greetings
Sergio.
se me demoro come 16 horas
o tal vez 18 (no me acuerdo pero fue bastante la espera)
Well I’m right in the middle of upgrading my ix2-200’s drives. So far it’s been behaving perfectly for over 2 years (fingers crossed!) but it’s extremely low on space ( < 5% remaining of about ~1.5TB).
Unfortunately I have no external drive or other storage medium capable of storing the contents of the NAS while I rebuild the drives. I was afraid this would leave me in a pickle since I realize that even after replacing both drives one at a time with shiny new 3TB drives the NAS is still going to think it's full unless I smash the RAID and reconstruct it so it can see everything… but doing so would also lose all my data.
I'm pretty sure I've come across a working solution to preserve my data and still upgrade my hard drives.
#1. Remove 2nd HDD from iomega store center (let's call this Drive B)
#2. Attach Drive B from iomega store center to PC via SATA
#3. Install linux on usb flash drive and boot PC to that (i.e Linux Live Mode)
#4. Next I installed mdadm and ran:
lubuntu@lubuntu:~$ sudo mdadm -A -R /dev/md9 /dev/sda2
mdadm: /dev/md9 has been started with 1 drive (out of 2).
#5. After this Drive B was visible in the linux's file manager program as a 1.5TB Volume. All of my data is accessible!
#6. I put a new 3TB drive (let's call it Drive C) back into the iomega where Drive B used to be and the powered the iomega store center back on.
#7. This is where I'm at now. The iomega storecenter promptly emailed me a notification that it was rebuilding the protection and that the system would be accessible but performance might be degraded during the rebuild operation. It's at about 10% complete and chugging away.
#8. Once Drive C has been rebuilt I will remove the last original HDD from the store center (let's call it Drive A and replace it with my second 3TB replacement drive (Drive D) and power it back on to copy from Drive C to Drive D
#9. Once Drive D is rebuilt I will break the RAID and reinitialize it to use the entire 3TB of space in RAID 1 again.
#10. From my desktop PC I will begin copying my data from Drive B back onto the NAS.
Tada! I'll be back to let everyone know the results 🙂
Just a heads up on the temperature threshold…. i posed the question of when the fans start spinning on the ix-200ce to iomega tech support…. their answer was 59F (if i recall correctly)
If you have root shell access (which is easy to get) this whole process is much simpler and your you don’t have to erase your existing data (but make a backup!).
– Swap one disk
– Let the raid rebuild
– Swap second disk
– Let the raid rebuild
– from the shell;
# mdadm –grow /dev/md2 –size=max
# resize2fs /dev/md2
# e2fsck -f /dev/md2
Good stuff to know. Thanks for sharing with me and the people interested in this
Hi Alfredo, have you upgraded ix2-200 NAS with Seagate ST*000VN000 serie?
Thank you,
tode
Yes
Thanks!
I’m going to buy two ST4000VN000 units 😉
tode
Hi Alfredo, any idea if a 6TB will work with this model?
That’s a good idea. I’m hoping it will or better yet with the new 8tb drives that are out
Hi Alfredo, whats the max hdd size, we can upgrade?? I am considering 6TB.
[…] Upgrading IOmega ix2-200 to bigger hard drives. | full … – Jan 31, 2012 · 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 …… […]
[…] Upgrading IOmega ix2-200 to bigger hard drives. | full … – Jan 31, 2012 · 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 …… […]
[…] Upgrading IOmega ix2-200 to bigger hard drives. | full … – 2012-01-31 · 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 …… […]
Wished I would have come across this article last week.
My HDD1 was giving me warnings about an imminent failure and it had made a few loud click/clock noises in my ix2-200 (1TB) which was set as Mirror RAID1 (2 x 1TB). I managed to copy the most important data (my photos) onto a secondary external USB hard drive and then purchased a new 1TB hard drive today and did a swap. The RAID1 mirror rebuilt itself after a few hours.
Even though I’m only using my device for photos and some documents and barely have 250MB used, if I would have read/found your blog post before, I would have purchased 2 x 2TB drives and followed your steps and replace both drives with 2TB drives (the near defective one and the one that is working fine) to get ~2TB of Mirror RAID1 protection.
I’ll use your instructions the next time one of the drives fails on my ix-200.
Thanks for the good article/blog post.
update January 6. 2015:
so after 3 years of my NAS being on 24/7 one of the drives died on me. as a result i posted these 2 posts
part 1: https://alfredomarchena.wordpress.com/2015/01/03/downgrading-iomega-ix2-200-drives-challenges/
part 2: https://alfredomarchena.wordpress.com/2015/01/06/downgrading-iomega-ix2-200-drives-challenges-part-2/
[…] Upgrading IOmega ix2-200 to bigger hard drives. | full … – Jan 31, 2012 · thanks for the reply, it was more of necessity that drives curious minds to experiment and come up with innovative results… […]
Thank you for the free weekend 🙂
not sure what the ‘free weekend’ means but ill take it
The 1st drive in my Iomega 1×2-200 NAS died, had both 1TB drive in raid 0, no backup of the device. The device was used as my backup. Any chance for getting the device backup? If the data is lost I am ok, with that. I just purchased a 4 bay NAS. Thanks, Mario, masmith22@verizon.net
there is no way to recover RADIO 0 since its not mirrored – but don’t feel bad I’ve done this before earlier in my days now id rather have 50% of the space but now that it is mirrored. now if you have company funds maybe there is a way to recover it with expensive data recovery services but it is very very expensive and not meant for home users since the cost will hit your savings.
Thought I understood your instructions, but it appears I messed up, I think by skipping step 3.
Replaced DiskB by new DiskB’ in RAID1; then replaced DiskA by DiskA’ in RAID 1; had DiskA’ and DiskB’ with copied data, but appeared with capacity of former disks. So moved from RAID1 to RAID0, with question of erasing data. (your steps 5-7?); both new disks are running, with correct capacity, but with…no data.
Now I have:
2 original disks (with all my data, disks were in RAID1) not in the NAS.
2 new disks in the NAS, but totally empty.
Trying indeed to start with the two originals doesn’t work, neither with one of them.
Precise advise would really be welcome – and this time I’ll make sure to read and apply carefully.
Tx for the blog !
this is because the bootable partition is on one of the original drives. you need extra disk to do this.
copy the existing data to a 3rd location temporarily
power on device with 1 old drive and 1 new drive
break the raid (it will delete all your data which is why i said save elsewhere)
then setup again as new raid 1
once thats done power off
remove smaller drive
move larger drive to slot 1 (if reboot doesn’t start again)
see if it boots with just 1 new drive
if it does… power off
add second new drive
power back on
break raid
create a NEW raid 1 array
this will copy the bootable files on both drives.
then you’ll have raid1 the right size
copy all your data back
if you want to be extra safe copy a few files on new RAID1 power off, pull one of the drives, power on make sure it still boots and you can still get to those few files… power off, push the drive you pulled out back in and pull the second drive out and power back on – should start without issues regardless of the drive – it’ll say mirror is broken or not available but thats expected since there is only one drive..
power off..
push both drives in.. power back on.. now that you’ve checked bootable partition is in both disks… copy your files back
Greeting from Brazil!
I´m about to replace my 1TB hdd by 2 or 3TB, not sure about it.
My ix2 200 had many times reported a fan malfunction, i found a lot of hits about the problem but no solution, do you know anything about it?
The hdd may be 7200 rpm, right? Any brand? Samsung, Seagate?
Thanks for the great post!
RED drives seem to be better built to support constantly spinning disks for NAS like devices – stay away from green drives (power efficient) since I’ve had issues with them spinning down when i don’t use them and taking a few secs to come back on which windows sometimes reports are not being able to connect to the computer (offline behavior) then going back to it works but it can be annoying
Hi,
I have an old ix2-200 and one of the HD broke… So I bought two 3TB HD to upgrade them, without knowing that the old ix2 didnt support hd’s with more than 2TB capacity.
So I decided to upgrade the firmware to the Cloud Edition (compatible with 3TB) and try your steps, unfortunately without success. Is there anything I could do to fix this or do I have to spend more money on a new storage?
Thanks
there is new firmware that came out for this (possibly after you write this) try that otherwise have you tried to make split them in say 1tb + 2tb partitions?
My situation was like this..
Bought a ix20 200 with 1TB RAID 1. After copying music, video and doc, left over space was 180GB. So decide to change the drives to 2TB. Seller ready to take back the 1TB hard drives and give 2TB drives with reasonable money.
There i started to search the internet for upgrade to be sure all goes well. And i come over to this site and realize the OS sits in the HDD. and a simple swap of the two drives will not do the job. Immediately took back of data. and erase the drive and break the mirror. Since i was holding couple of 80GB to 160 GB laptop HDD (2.5 inch), i decide to replace the HDD2 with 80 GB 2.5 inch while HDD 1 kept intact ( 1TB 3.5 inch). After changing the drive, make mirror which shrink the capacity to 78GB ( expected). Once mirrored, changed the HDD 1 and put the 160GB 2.5 inch HDD and booted. Data reconstruction. Now i have a 78GB mirror drive of 2.5 inch. (weight, noise and heat is very less) Awaited for the 2TB 3.5 inch HDD to complete the process. If money was not a constrain, i would go with 2TB 2.5 inch drives.
In essence….
1,You need at least one original HDD which contain the OS partition.
2, You can use 2.5 inch (laptop) HDD to reduce the unit weight, heat and noise – you may need to provide adequate cushioning to hold the drives properly.
@ alfredomarchena – thank you so much for the heads up on OS part on the HDD.
no problem – amusing to me that this post is a bit old and i still get kudos about it
You’re welcome man. Appreciate the well received comment.
I just wanted to say thank you for this write up, I did this last week and I now have 2tb of disk space with some pretty inexpensive ($50) 2tb drives! It does seem to be running a little hotter now, so I may have to do some external fan work, but it looks like it’s running around 56-57c degrees.
if your use case isnt instant available data you can go with the green drives… they spin down when not in use (i have mine after 10 min) it lowers the speed but when theyre spun down and you need them it takes a few seconds for them to spin back up. since i use it to store backups and software its not often i need it so ive found that lowers the temperature as well
I looked at those, but they were more expensive, and I have an iSCSI drive for a test VMware environment on my IX2, so it is always on. I think a fan mod should help.
Yeah iscsi on green would not work.