Upgrade 500GB Blue Ring Single Disk To 1,5TB Using WD15EARS / Discussion

This is the discussion related to the wiki page Upgrade 500GB Blue Ring Single Disk To 1,5TB Using WD15EARS.

Isn't there an EASIER WAY?

tyrelpl 04 Mar 2010 10:13

Hi everyone. I'm looking for some feedback here. I basically did the procedure listed here, but WIHOUT the need to set up a virtual machine or another Linux Machine. I used the built-in web interface to format the disk and make it RAID1. Anyone see any problems doing that? If no, then I can post my guide for doing this without the need for another PC or any kind of copying of the first 3 partitions at all. Where is the appropriate place. Should I make a new wiki page or should I post it in the comments here?

Thanks again.

Re: Isn't there an EASIER WAY?

joostden 25 Aug 2010 21:24

This is special for the single disk version. With a dual RAID version there are other options.

bootloader copy step wrong?

edavid 25 Aug 2010 05:49

2. Copy the Bootloader

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=4096 skip=1 count=48194

I believe this step is incorrect; the bootloader is the first 3 cylinders, 48194 sectors, not 48194 4K blocks. Steps 1 and 2 should be combined into:

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=48195

Also, if you follow this procedure I think you will end up with filesystems not on 4K boundaries, which is not so great for the EARS 4K sector drives.

Re: bootloader copy step wrong?

joostden 25 Aug 2010 21:28

I think it doesn't really matter. Linux sees the disk as big box of data, the dd command copies without knowing the disk. Important is to know there is hidden data on de MBWE that must be copied to the new disk.

Thanks

Re: bootloader copy step wrong?

edavid 25 Aug 2010 23:44

I think it doesn't really matter.

It does matter, because the bs=4096 skip=1 in the original step 2 puts the bootloader in the wrong place, so the new disk won't boot.

Re: bootloader copy step wrong?

joostden 26 Aug 2010 09:33

You can update the Wiki in the way you think it works better. BTW my MBWE works fine for several months now.

Re: bootloader copy step wrong?

edavid 26 Aug 2010 15:32

OK, I made that change.

Other problems I ran into (on Fedora):

1. If you mount any partition from either the old or new disk, the RAID minor number gets changed, and if you don't fix it the disk won't work in an MBWE.

2. Growing the data partition with gparted changed the UUID of the RAID device md4. It's not too hard to fix, but it might be better to use a different partition tool.

3. The original drive doesn't have its partitions aligned to 4K boundaries - still thinking about this.

Re: bootloader copy step wrong?

joostden 28 Aug 2010 10:45

@1: I used freebsd with vmware. my raidnumber did not change
@2: That's why i wrote the "Extra Fallback", Perhaps you have an other solution you can share
@3: Do you think the MBWE will be faster after changing the bounderies?

Re: bootloader copy step wrong?

edavid 30 Aug 2010 16:13

@2: That's why i wrote the "Extra Fallback", Perhaps you have an other solution you can share

If you remove the /etc/mdadm.conf file on the new drive, there's a startup script that will recreate it.

@3: Do you think the MBWE will be faster after changing the bounderies?

I'm not sure, maybe the blue ring MBWE is too slow for it to matter. I'm not sure how to measure it.

WD20EARS upgrade with aligned partitions

edavid 30 Aug 2010 16:39

I did things slightly differently:

0. connect old and new disk to Fedora 11 Linux system
old 1TB drive WD10EACS = /dev/sdb
new 2TB drive WD20EARS = /dev/sdc

(at this point you might also want to boot MSDOS and run WDIDLE3 to change the IDLE3 setting on the new drive)

1. Copy the MBR + Bootloader

dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc bs=512 count=48195

2. Update partition table

I created the partition table below, which uses the standard 63 * 255 = 16065 byte cylinders, but starts each partition on a 4KB boundary (which means an 8 cylinder boundary). This makes partitions 1, 2, 3 a bit larger than normal. You might want to make the swap partition even larger (as in the white LED version).

sfdisk /dev/sdc << EOF
unit: sectors

/dev/sdb1 : start=   128520, size=  5911920, Id=fd
/dev/sdb2 : start=  6040440, size=   257040, Id=fd
/dev/sdb3 : start=  6297480, size=  2056320, Id=fd
/dev/sdb4 : start=  8353800, size=3898654200, Id=fd
EOF

3. Copy the partitions

dd if=/dev/sdb1 of=/dev/sdc1 bs=64k
dd if=/dev/sdb3 of=/dev/sdc3 bs=64k
dd if=/dev/sdb4 of=/dev/sdc4 bs=64k

4. Create RAID devices

mdadm -Cv /dev/md1 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc1 missing
mdadm -Cv /dev/md2 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc2 missing
mdadm -Cv /dev/md3 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc3 missing
mdadm -Cv /dev/md4 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc4 missing
mdadm --assemble /dev/md1 --update=super-minor /dev/sdc1
mdadm --assemble /dev/md2 --update=super-minor /dev/sdc2
mdadm --assemble /dev/md3 --update=super-minor /dev/sdc3
mdadm --assemble /dev/md4 --update=super-minor /dev/sdc4

5. Remove mdadm.conf on new disk so it will be re-created on boot

mount /dev/md1 /mnt
rm /mnt/etc/mdadm.conf
umount /mnt
mdadm --stop --scan

6. Expand the filesystems and swap space to fit the new partition sizes

resize2fs /dev/sdc1
mkswap /dev/sdc2
resize2fs /dev/sdc3
resize2fs /dev/sdc4

Re: WD20EARS upgrade with aligned partitions

kryxan 04 Jul 2011 05:14

@edavid your partition number are not compliant with 4k sectors. i have taken the time to work out numbers that are correct to the 4k sector standard AND end on the cylinder ends, providing partitions that are optimal. i had thought that i saved those numbers to paste here, but i did not. i have not fully tested the new partitions on my wd mybook blue light, but i have set up the partitions and am transfering files. to prove that my numbers are correct:

GNU Parted 2.3
Using /dev/sdc
Welcome to GNU Parted! Type 'help' to view a list of commands.
(parted) align-check                                                      
alignment type(min/opt)  [optimal]/minimal? opt                           
Partition number? 1                                                       
1 aligned
(parted) align-check                                                      
alignment type(min/opt)  [optimal]/minimal? opt                           
Partition number? 2                                                       
2 aligned
(parted) align-check                                                      
alignment type(min/opt)  [optimal]/minimal? opt                           
Partition number? 3                                                       
3 aligned
(parted) align-check                                                      
alignment type(min/opt)  [optimal]/minimal? opt                           
Partition number? 4                                                       
4 aligned

i will be posting the numbers i used, the partitions are only slightly larger than the original partitions

Last edited on 06 Jul 2011 00:23 by kryxan Show more

Re: WD20EARS upgrade with aligned partitions

kryxan 05 Jul 2011 10:52

after checking and reading and more checking i have determined that while edavid's numbers do appear to be aligned, they are not optimally aligned according to parted or the WD Align tool they do still meet the minimun requirements as far as i can tell, so they should work.

Last edited on 06 Jul 2011 00:20 by kryxan Show more

Re: WD20EARS upgrade with aligned partitions

kryxan 21 Jul 2011 02:12

some notes from my setup. btw thank you edavid for the reminder to use mdadm. when running the mdadm commands i had touse —metadata=0.90 or i could not get the device to boot.

mdadm --metadata=0.90 -Cv /dev/md1 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc1 missing
mdadm --metadata=0.90 -Cv /dev/md2 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc2 missing
mdadm --metadata=0.90 -Cv /dev/md3 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc3 missing
mdadm --metadata=0.90 -Cv /dev/md4 -l1 -n2 /dev/sdc4 missing

also i found that the swap was not being used on my system, i fixed this by running mkswap for the raid md2 instead of sda2

mkswap /dev/md2

frederikk 23 Nov 2010 20:58

Hi,

i tried to upgrade my 500GB blue ring mybook with a W20EARS drive… unsuccessfully :(
When putting the 2TB drive back the MBWE does not boot :( No blue light… :(

In fact i don't even have any data to migrate, so i thought it would be easier… but no way :(
May it come from the new EARS 4k drive ? even if some people managed to do it with a 1.5TB EARS…

Ciao
Fred

frederikk 24 Nov 2010 08:29

Sorry, but i'm trying to update the MBWE again… just a question : i have a simple blue ring one, so with only one disk. Is the raid creating process necessary ?
I tried the wiki method, without success, so i'm trying yours edavid.

Ciao
Fred

frederikk 24 Nov 2010 09:37

Hi, again, sorry. But i've got a problem, when creating the partition table on the new disk, i have a warning message from sfdisk :
Warning : no primary partition is marked bootable (active).
This does not matter for LILO, but the DOS MBR will not boot this disk.

I know we don't use DOS, but do we use LILO ? or GRUB ?

Ciao
Fred

frederikk 25 Nov 2010 13:45

Ok. I managed to do it with a mix of edavid and the wiki page… moreover have to create a swap and activate it in order to make the md4 visible… don't really know how i managed it, but that's ok now ! Great a 2TB mybook.. a little sorry about the performances (5MB/s in FTP) but it's ok for a backup solution.

Moreover the WD Green disk is less than 40° in use where the WD500AKKS was more than 52… even more when heavily used ! Now the chipset is more hot than the disk… so great solution :)

Thank you for your help edavid and the community !

Ciao
Fred

shadowman2001 19 Feb 2011 19:20

HI AND HELP PLEASE !!!
Hi my story is oryginal WD 500GB replaced with WD 1.5TB WD15EADS
I did all with instruction but with no luck.
I'm using VMware Workstation 7.0.0 build-203739

make short i tried 3 times and found that till growing partition all was working.
the new 1.5tb was booting and blue rings show up and from web access I could see interface and all like it was before with 500GB. so next step should be expanding partition no4 (storeage)

and here is my problem after that process drive is not booting in enclosure no blue rings.

and tried checking disk and finalize rest of the proccess but with no luck.

so I think (and correct me if I'm wrong that after growing last partition somethning is going wrong.

I need help with that please.

also when I apply command sfdisk -d /dev/sdb | sed s/sdb/sdc > part_sdb.img to copy patririon table got this:

root@debian:~# sfdisk -d /dev/sdb | sed s/sdb/sdc > part_sdb.img
sed: -e expression #1, char 9: unterminated ‘s’ command
root@debian:~#

what is wrong with that command?

any advice? help me please

Regards Slawomir

joostden 20 Feb 2011 18:18

Hi Slawomir,

It look like you need to do the "extra fallback" steps as shown in my original post.

That should do the trick

Joostden

petran 24 Dec 2012 10:34

Hello everyone,
I am afraid the above procedure has not worked for me.

I have a MBW2 blue rings, single 1TB drive, whose HD has become unreliable and the device usually hangs or does not boot at all.
So I purchased a WD Red (WD10EFRX), counting on the NAS-oriented specs. Unfortunately, it is 4K sector (i.e. advanced format) - I was not familiar with that before.

I've tried the procedure using both the rescue image files indicated in the respective article and the partition/bootloader images I extracted form the old WD Green disk.
The problem I notice is that when restoring the partition table to the new disk, then the new disk appears to have about 8 times the size of the original ones. So the first partition seems to be 24GB, the third 8GB and the fourth a massive 8TB !!!! :) I wish!
To my understanding, this is because the partition table backup refers to sectors, but the WD Red sectors are obviously 8 times the size of old ones. Running gparted does not help, either: it does not show the 4 partitions and just warns of the false limits.

Any help would be greatly appreciated!

Regards,
Petros

gparted will take care of the 4k alignment?

Andy_D 07 Feb 2016 09:59

Didn't work for me (I hadn't read edavid) - but it doesn't seem to matter, subjectively my mbwe is marginally faster despite no 4k alignment.
What I did:
My mbwe blue-ring single 1Tb stopped working (I now suspect the power supply). I assumed it was the disk, the nearest available replacement was Green Caviar WD10EZRX (4k Advanced format).
I got the old disk working on the DVD cables of my dual-boot PC, with a spare power supply.
I put the new EZRX on a usb3 caddy.
I ignored all the advice on copying and (double checking sdb/c!) just did:
dd if=/dev/sdb of=/dev/sdc ibs=512 obs=4096 conv=noerror,sync
after 4+ hours I got successful completion but fdisk -l reported alignment problems.
I ran gparted check on all partitions - this did nothing
I loaded the drive in the mbwe and it ran fine.
Took it out and tried to align the partitions with gparted - and bricked the drive for mbwe.
Am now repeating the dd copy.
For those wanting to just upgrade then it should work to do my straight disk to disk copy then follow above instructions to re-size partition 4 and rebuild the raid (if you want it)