In the previous article about the QNAP TS-464, I demonstrated how easy it was to migrate from TS-230 to the new NAS, simply by moving the HDD from the old NAS to the new NAS.

Seagate IHM Monitors QNAP NAS HDD Health
I have been using the Seagate IronWolf 4TB hard drive which supports the IronWolf Health Management (IHM). Using the QNAP Storage & Snapshots app, it tells me that the HDD has been monitored by IHM for over 400 days and the health is “Good”. So what IHM does is to monitor the supported HDD to safeguard the health of the drive with prevention, intervention, and recovery options.

Going into details, the IHM monitors the HDD conditions such as temperature, shock, vibration, intermittent connections, signal integrity, running regular analysis to monitor parameters related to data transfer, readability, writability, and overall reliability. It will then notify the user via the QTS OS to recommend actions before it turns bad. In the event of failure, you are still protected by the 3-year Rescue Data Recovery Service, which is provided by Seagate.
While most modern HDDs support S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology), they have fewer monitoring parameters, and do not capture usage trends. Comparatively, IHM monitors over time hence its diagnostics and assessments should be more accurate.
One important note: IHM is only available for IronWolf and IronWolf Pro HDDs with capacity of 4TB and above.

Time To RAID
After over 1 year of running my NAS on a single hard drive, I am ready to move to a RAID config. Seagate sent over four 3TB harddisks to help me experience the transition. Because my current hard drive is larger than the new hard drives, I cannot simply insert new drives and convert to RAID. The most straightforward method is to migrate the data using two NAS servers. I inserted my old 4TB drive back to the TS-230, and slotted my new 3TB drives to the TS-464. I went through the process of setting up a new NAS, created the storage pool and picking a RAID group.

The important question for new RAIDers like me is: which RAID type should I choose?
I have done enough research to conclude that there is no “best” or RAID type. Each has their pros and cons. The RAID type that offers the highest failure protection uses more hard disks with lower storage capacity because of parity information to store extra data to recover from failure of any disk. Check out this summary:

I choose RAID-5 because it offers a good balance of data protection, performance, and storage capacity. With RAID-5, I can start with 3 drives and I lose just one drive worth of storage capacity. Meaning, for a 3x 3TB setup, I will have 2x 3TB worth of storage. Later when I extend to 4x 3TB, I will have 3x 3TB storage.
For a start, even though I have four IronWolf HDDs, I have only installed three drives. If I run out of space in future, I will add the fourth drive to the RAID. Or, if one of the drives fails, I will replace it with this additional drive. The biggest disadvantage is that RAID-5 has a tolerance of only 1 drive failure, so it is only recommended for smaller storage. If you are setting up a lot of drives which increase the potential failure count, then you should definitely change to RAID-6.
Migrate NAS data with HBS 3
Now that I have decided on a RAID group and completed the storage pool and volume selection, I can start to migrate my old data. First, install Hybrid Backup Sync (HBS 3) on both NAS, enable RTRR Server on the destination NAS (TS-464 for my case), and then create a backup job from the source NAS (TS-230). You can read the detailed steps on the QNAP help page here.
The benefit of using HBS 3 is that it functions as a backup, restore, and sync application. On the surface, it looks no different from a copy-and-paste job from one folder to another, but actually, using HBS 3 allows the transfer to be intelligently managed. Apart from scheduling and tracking the progress, HBS 3 uses QuDedup to reduce the backup size which also means faster data transfer.
It took over 1 day to transfer 1TB of data from my old NAS to the new NAS. If you have a faster network, it might be faster. The data is found in a “backup” folder instead of appearing in the same folder structure as my old NAS. The next step is to populate the data to the “correct” folders within the new NAS. Using the HBS 3, I can create multiple restore jobs for each destination folder (\Photos, \Movies, etc.), to schedule to run one after another and during specific times (like after midnight).
Conclusion
There are 2 takeaways from this article. One: use Seagate IronWolf storage drives on QNAP NAS that support IronWolf Health Management (IHM) to give advance alerts on the health of the storage drives before they reach permanent failure. Two: use an appropriate RAID group to ensure data is safely recoverable in the event of a permanent drive failure.

And why should you run a NAS at home instead of subscribing to cloud storage? The key benefit is that the NAS resides within your own premise and you have total ownership control over your data without the worry of privacy. It is also cheaper in the long run. The drawback is that you – the owner – is responsible for the security and maintenance of the NAS. Fortunately with QNAP, it comes with tools to help you monitor and recommend the best settings to keep your NAS safe.