NAS 1200s External Storage

[Tim Rotunda]

I need to add space to my NAS 1200s 320GB and was thinking about doing one of two things.

First I was thinking about replacing the drives with larger ones and doing a Quick Restore from the DVD that came with it. I would then restore data from tape. Sounds reasonable to me, but I can’t find any posting regarding this. Someone on the biz forum posted this question yesterday but today the posting is gone. I hope this posting doesn’t.

Second (and my choice) is to add a SCSI card and attach a MSA30. Just add another container.

Thoughts?

Thanks,
Tim

[Jon Paul · Accepted solution]

Hi Tim,
Either of you plans would most likely land you in an "unsupported configuration". That said, ....
Either of your options should work fine. Just a couple of points:

Replace drives with larger drives:
- You could replace the drives one at a time and rebuild the software RAID sets in windows without having to pull info from the tape drive. (make sure you have valid backups in case of drive failure during rebuild)

Add an MSA30:
- There should already be a SCSI HBA in your system (intended for direct attach tape backup only)
- MSA30 would increase performance
Bear in mind that you would be adding expensive storage to a relatively in-expensive server.
If you are purchasing the MSA30 new, you may want to look at a new server w/ storage and either migrate your data or use Distributed File Services(DFS) to keep a single namespace for your users. This would also keep you in a "Supported configuration"