Bigger disks in an Iomega IX2-200

The IX2-200 is a NAS that supports 2 harddisks. You can configure the disks in JBOD and RAID1. My model had 2x 1TB disks which I ran in RAID1. One disk failed. A good moment to check if I could deploy bigger disks. The initial problem is that a new disk is configured at the size of the old. So, using a new 2TB disk will only give 1TB of storage.

This post will explain how you can easy upgrade to larger disks, using only the IX2-200 webpages.

IX2-200

WARNING: following these steps will DESTROY all your data. I suggest you create a backup first and verify that the backup was successful or leave the box as it is.

Starting situation:

• IX2-200 with the latest firmware (2.1.38). 
• 2x 1TB Seagate Barracuda LP disk in RAID1 (effectively ~1TB storage capacity).
• Failed RAID1 set.

Actions:

1. Create a backup of all the data/shares. Verify the backups!
2. Remove one of the disks (in my case the failing disk) and add a new, larger disk.
3. A rebuild of the RAID1 set will start. 
4. Change the disk configuration to JBOD (Settings > Disks > Manage Disks > Data Protection > Without data protection...). WARNING: this is the point where your data gets lost!
5. The IX2-200 will reboot and construct the JBOD. This will take a few minutes. Wait until the JBOD is ready.
6. Shutdown and replace the other disk with one of the same capacity as the other new disk.
7. Startup and wait for the JBOD to be ready again.
8. Change the disk configuration to RAID1 (Settings > Disks > Manage Disks > Data Protection > Mirror based...).
9.  The IX2-200 will reboot and construct the RAID1 set. Rebuild speed is ~250GB/hr.
10. Restore the users, groups, settings, shares and data.

Current situation:

• 2x 2TB Samsung HD204UI disks in RAID1 (effectively ~2TB storage capacity).

Problems:

• Impatience. It will take a few minutes before changes are reworked and many hours to rebuild a RAID1 set.
• Broken IX2-200 firmware/system software. See this blog post to rebuild a completely broken IX2-200 firmware/system software. Note: the provided IX2-200 software might be updated to the latest version. This is out of the scope of my post.
  There is also a method using a USB stick with image. You can use http://{ix2 ip}/diagnostics.html (Cloud edition) for SSH and other diagnostics methods.
• Other Iomega NASs. This post might work on other Iomega NAS devices but this has not been tested.
• Other brand NASs. You are on your own.