Replacing Hard Drives from One Synology to Another

Hi All! How scary is this process?

If I decide to go crazy and purchase the mammoth 12 Bay Synology 2422+ to replace a smaller 5-Bay NAS, is it as simple as add the drives and presto no need to reformat? Or are there additional steps?

Thanks!

Hi Richie,

it should work without problems. I did it myself a year ago. I put my hard drives from a 1815+ to an 1821+. It worked without problems. But there are a few things you should be aware of:

  • the two Synology must have the same cpu architecture and
  • you should save the configuration from the old NAS, to import it to the new NAS, because not all configurations are adopted to the new system.

See the Knowledge Center article from Synology for more:

Synology Knowledge Center

Best regards,
Oliver

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My biggest fear is the whole M.2 Nvme drive warning that if you take it out it can destroy the storage pool. I’ll research the KB article now.

Thanks!

Do you use the NVMe as a pool or as a cache?

If cache:
A few years ago, I had a SSD cache on my 1815+. It was no problem to “deactivate” the cache and to pull out the SSDs. No data loss for me. It should be the same with a NVMe cache.

If you use the NWMe as a pool, I would move the share(s) from the NVMe to a pool/volume which is not located on the NVMe. After that, it should be possible to deactivate the NVMe and take them out.

Ah so if you have a read write cache what you are going to want to do is first remove the cache in DSM, then migrate the pool and reinstate it. That way you dont have to risk having the cache screw things up

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Thanks for clarification. This is what I meant. First thing to do is to remove the cache.

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I believe the 2422+ “requires” the Synology brand drives, right? Is there any concern of moving from a NAS that doesn’t require them to a NAS that does?

Can you still do the simple HDD migration of transferring the drives?

So the units that ‘require’ Synology drives are a soft requirement. Basically they will flash warnings and other annoying stuff (like making the pool in warning mode), but they will accept any hard drives.

I have not fully tested this, but it should still work! (just with a warning)

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Did teh same not to long ago too. Not exactly to 15 bay … Make sure to place them in the same drive bay order and make sure DSM detects it.
As alternative if it doesn’t wokr back up everything using hyperbackup and restore it to the new NAS. There are several good articles for migrating using 3 approaches.

The easiest is if it works by moving the drives.