Extra Disks

Adding Extra Disk's
The Terastation is a very capable box that has enough hardware build in to expand it further than its original intent. One such expansion, and the most obvious one, is to expand its Storage capabilities.

This can easily be down by adding four extra Hard Disks to the system. You have to remember that the Terastation comes with 2 IDE controllers. Each with two channels, and Each channel accepting a Master and a Slave device. Thus you have a potential total of 8 Drives.

So the hardware should be capable. What about the software. The underlying OS is very capable in accepting extra drives, however the Web Front end is not as this is geared to only allowing 4 drives.

So apart from the Web Front end, the Hardware and OS is very much capable in accepting 8 drives. How do we proceed in making fiction into fact.

Only attempt this if your are confident with taking apart and putting back together electronic items. '''And as always. Backup your HD before doing anything major like this.'''

Requirements

 * 1x Terastation
 * 1x Firmware with Telnet or SSH installed.
 * 8x IDE Caddies
 * 4x 250gb Hard Disks
 * 4x 5v-12v Power splitters
 * 4x 3 headed IDE 100 Ribbon Cable
 * 1x Enclosure

First thing you have to bear in mind is that this setup will mean you will not be using the existing Terastation box anymore as you are going to have to expand outside the box. (can someone please post a link to some recommended caddies for this project? I'd love to do it, but all the caddies I have found cost as much as the hard drives)

Secondly when you get the caddies and extra hard disks. Make sure that you don't go over the Rated Power supply amount or you'll be looking for a new power supply. The buffalo PSU should have enough juice to run all 8 HD and mother board if you stick to similar HD as the ones that came with the Buffalo.

Thirdly, if you want the web front end changed so that you can do things via this medium you will need to edit some of the files in the www directory.

Hardware Steps

 * 1) Open your Terastation as per the user manual instructions on changing a Hard Disk.  Be sure to label your hard disks to the corresponding IDE connector.
 * 2) Unscrew the power supply, fan and motherboard (keeping the motherboard attached to the base plate.
 * 3) Change buffalo hard disks to Master HD.
 * 4) Change the 4 new hard disks to Slaves HD.
 * 5) Install into all the caddies. Remembering the Buffalo hard drive numbers.
 * 6) Join one Buffalo hard disk to a new hard disk with the IDE cable.
 * 7) Wire the IDE cable into the Motherboard keeping the Same Buffalo HD going to the same IDE connector.
 * 8) Join the power from the PSU to the Splitters and then to the Caddies.
 * 9) Install into your chosen box.
 * 10) Reconnect power and Network.
 * 11) Power back up.

Software Steps
If you've done the Hardware steps correctly and made sure that the Drives that came out are reconnected in the same order then your Terastation should boot up correctly. The system should be working as normal except for the extra HD's These are currently unknown to the system so we need to do a few CLI commands to initialise them.

The following steps WILL erase all data from your new Hard Drives AND could potentially remove all the data from your existing HD if typed in incorrectly or supplied incorrect data

These instructions are based on getting a new RAID 5 array on Array2. So if you have Array2 already assigned then you will have to improvise and try doing to Array3. Again only attempt this if your are confident with UNIX.

1. Telnet onto the Box.

2.   cd /mnt 3.   mkdir disk5 disk6 disk7 disk8 4.   /usr/local/bin/hdd_format.sh /dev/hdb3 /mnt/disk5 xfs RAID /usr/local/bin/hdd_format.sh /dev/hdd3 /mnt/disk6 xfs RAID /usr/local/bin/hdd_format.sh /dev/hdf3 /mnt/disk7 xfs RAID /usr/local/bin/hdd_format.sh /dev/hdh3 /mnt/disk8 xfs RAID 5.   umount /mnt/disk5 umount /mnt/disk6 umount /mnt/disk7 umount /mnt/disk8 6.   /usr/local/bin/mkraid5.sh /dev/md2 /dev/hdb3 /dev/hdd3 /dev/hdf3 /dev/hdh3

There will be four errors saying "mkraid5: wrong device name". Don't worry about this for now. We've done the bit it was trying to do in the block of code that produces the error.

Hay presto you should now have a new Array set up waiting for you to use.

Web Front end changes
I have changes I made to firmware V2.08. You may need to adapt them for your revision of the firmware to get this working. '''Take a backup prior to making any changes. Do a cp -r www www.bak''' However until I can figure out how to get Wiki accept some HTML formatting I can't upload them. So I will point you to the files that need Updating instead.

In directory cgi-bin/html/en disk_array.html disk_array.pl disk_array_setup.pl  disk_check.pl  disk_format.pl  gate_check.pl  global_convert_diskname.pl  systeminfo_disk.html systeminfo_disk.pl top.pl

In directory cgi-bin/module BufDiskInfo.pm BufDiskMDStatus.pm  BufDiskModel.pm

Easiest way to find what you need is search for Disk4 and hdg3. Copy and add the previous line 4 times. Note that you will have to move braces if the need to be move. So a small understanding in Perl would be useful.

Disk 5 is hdb3 Disk 6 is hdd3 Disk 7 is hdf3 Disk 8 is hdh3

As soon as I've figured out how to get the changes on Wiki so that it doesn't reformat all the code I will put up the new version.

why not upload a tarball with all modified files? just send me a private message and you will have access to upload some stuff to the terastation-section of the linkstationwiki-downloadsection. Mindbender 15:43, 17 October 2006 (CEST)

Anyway enjoy the new and larger Terastation.

I NEED HELP FOR UPDATE WEBFILES mailto:inputsammler@gmx.de