QNAP 219 PII. Which HDD is which?

Dungassin, I have had a look around on t'internet and downloaded the Qnap hardware manual but nothing I could find gives me a definitive answer to this basic question. Logic would say to me that drive 1 is the leftmost.

I presume that you are using the "Online RAID capacity expansion" procedure at "Disk management" => "Raid management" => "Expand capacity", so I would expect that when the system says "You can replace this drive", the indicator light will above will go out so ther is no power to that drive and you can unplug it.

All the above is just me thinking aloud as it were. I have emailed Qnap several times since owning my TS439 II Pro and they respond but it does take a while with the time difference. I have found them to be good for clearing up doubts.

Hope this helps.

Are you sure that it makes a difference?  If the drives are truly mirrored with data redundancy, if one fails the other should be usable to restore the system.  Thus, you should be able to replace either, then the other, is my GUESS.  (This is the way it works with my Synology nas.)

No I don't think it should that is why I said follow the procedure and when the drive chosen to be swapped out has been "quiesced" by the system it says "you can replace this drive" beside the appropriate drive. Then it is safe to swap out the drive.

It does however make a difference if you pull the wrong drive at this point. Hence I would expect the drive light to indicate which is the correct one to swap. Not having expanded my raid capacity before I can't say for sure. I am suggesting that Dungassin has a chat with Qnap to clear up any doubts. I would hate him to lose his music and have to go through a long restore from backup for want of a bit of checking first. different systems do different things.

This is a link to the page in the Qnap manual

HDD1 is always on the left on a Qnap.

Make sure Qnap is running the latest 3.8.0 firmware.

In the past I used a Qnap TS-210 with two 1.5tb HDD, but there is no expand Raid function on this NAS as its not Hot Swop, so changed to a TS-219 and migrate disks. Then upgraded the disks to two 2TB hdd using the expand feature. Since then I have changed the TS-219 to a Qnap TS-412 and migrated the 2tb disks Raid1 then added an extra 2tb disk, changed to Raid5 and expanded, so now 3x2TB in Raid5.

Thanks for the replies.  I am indeed soon to embark on the 'expanding RAID' route.  I did have a look at the QNAP forums, but they no longer recognise my password, and the finding the search facility there is very difficult.  I'll email QNAP just to be sure.  I do have (TWO!) backups, but would like to use the expand method, as I believe (hope?) that will enable to still play tunes on my NDS while the expansion/upgrade is taking place.  Just wish I'd followed my instincts and got at least 3TB drives when I bought it - although I'd still probably have to upgrade to 4TB drives at some stage.

Incidentally, the HDD lights on the 219 are in the main panel on the left of the NAS, and not (alas) over the top of each drive where they would be more helpful.

I would go for the WD 3TB Red disks, can be purchased for around £110-£115 and are designed to work in NAS storage running 24/7

These are the instructions i used

http://qnapsupport.net/?page_id=2124

Takes an age so be patient but your NAS will still function to stream tunes to your NDS

I just bought two 2tb WD Reds.  I currently have the green Caviars, but I am too worried about them to leave the nas running 24/7.  Probably an irrational fear, but not the most irrational thing one might find here on these fora

So I'm going to swap the reds in for the greens this coming weekend.

I think we are all on the same page. Happy expansion Dungassin. It would be interesting to hear how it goes, how long etc.

That's actually in the manual under RAID management.  I've already printed it out for easier processeing.

I think my 4TB Hitachi drives are waiting for me at the local Post Office.  Parcel Farce tried to deliver something while I was out having a blood test for my "annual MOT" at the GPs.  Typical.  I'll go up to the village centre this afternoon and collect them.

Ho hum ...

Well, the 2 4TB Hitachi drives have arrived.  They ARE on the QNAP compatibility list, but I'm holding off from installing them because on the packaging its says "Deskstar 3TB and above Internal hard drive kits do not support RAID configuration' !!!

I think I'll have to email QNAP support and see if there's something special I have to do to get them to work.

Why can't life ever be simple?