Cold Storage

[mcichon]

I have a DS212 with two 3T disk drives installed, running RAID.

I'd like to power down the unit, and remove one disk for off-site storage.

Then, power up the unit and presumably follow whatever procedure exists for replacing a "bad" drive with a new one.

Question 1: Is this the best way to manage a cold-storage backup of my data?
Question 2: Will the drive I removed be readable by another compatible device?
Question 3: Does my replacement drive need to be the exact make of the original? (I doubt it)

[Dad Man Walking]

(1) Not a good way to set up off-site cold storage. It is not all that convenient to open up the case and remove/replace the drives...it's not set up like a unit with hot-swappable drives would be (easy access from the exterior of the device). Might sound like an OK thing to do now but would probably just turn into a hassle at some point in the near future. And backups are no good if you don't do them.

Sounds like you were going to involve a 3rd drive, so why don't you just get that in a USB case and back the NAS up to it, then take the USB drive off site. Seems like a lot less hassle for the same level of protection, and DSM has an app for that.

(2) Assuming you have set up a RAID-1 array, I believe that the drive would be readable by a PC capable of reading the EXT4 file system. If you set up a single 6TB volume with the 2 drives, this would not be possible. (I've not tested this...this is just what I've read on the internet, and you now how reliable that information can be.) And I don't think you would want to put that drive back into a RAID array directly...you'd want to strip off the data first, because I think it would get wiped when putting it back into a new array.

(3) No.