Best way to migrate 2TB of data from N5200 Pro to N8800SAS?

[jsnorman]

I have an N5200 Pro, that has about 2TB of data on RAID 10 (a huge mistake, I now understand, as it cannot be expanded under RAID 10).

I just bought the new N8800SAS (!!!) and am very excited to start using it, but how best to migrate from old to new? The migration needs to be reliable and preferably overnight so I do not have to take it off line during the day, and I would also like a procedure that will include verification and logging in case there are any issues. Of course, I also need to keep ownership, permissions, users, and group info intact.

I think the following would work, but I am not sure which is best, or what the pros/cons of each would be:

nsync - is there verification and logging?

rsynch (with modules) - will this work on N8800SAS? Is it too slow?

remove disks from N5200 and migrate/expand to new drives in N8800SAS? Will this work? I know I cannot expand RAID10 on the N5200 ... but it appears that the N8800SAS can expand RAID 10 according to the manual; but can the N8800SAS accept drives created by the N5200 and can it expand to larger drives where the underlying original drives were created by the N5200? And can the drives be safely moved from one to the other? Other ideas?

[Splash]

Personally I'd just build your array on the N8800, then copy the data across using Robocopy or similar.

[redclawkefar]

i'm with Splash on this one... trying to simply move HDD's from the n5200 to the n8800 will most likely cause data loss since the RAID is not wasn't built within the n8800.

[jsnorman]

What about nsync or rsync? I thought it would be much less efficient and more error prone to run the transfer through a third machine?

[Funkstar]

For what it's worth, others on here have moved an array from a N5200 to a N7700 without data loss.

I personally wouldn't recommend it, but it has been done. I have moved arrays from one N5200 to another in the past and never had a problem. Both units were at the same FW level though.

[Splash]

What about nsync or rsync? I thought it would be much less efficient and more error prone to run the transfer through a third machine?

rsync would also be fine. I've not tried nsync though.