2.5" hdd

You have an interesting idea, lets explore it a bit.

Notebook drives are lower powered for a reason - higher RPM's generates more heat and most notebooks already have problems dissipating heat. One does not have that problem with an NAS. Most notebook drives are 5400RPM for this reason. I did have a 7200RPM notebook drive but removed it because of the excessive heat it was generating. Western Digital is working on a line of Green drives with variable speeds, but the firmware on these drives is currently causing problems in the ReadyNAS lines (see the notes in the Hardware Compatibility List [HCL]). Seagate has a line of lower RPM drives that operate at 5900RPM in the Barracuda LP line. They seem to have their firmware issues resolved.

Looking at Newegg's HD listings, I find two 2.5" class 1TB drives (none larger) which range in price from $130 to $140 each. On the other hand, there are 46 1TB drives in the 3.5" class on Newegg, 14 of which are bulk drives ranging from $70 to $90 each. Five of these are the "Green" drives from Seagate and WD including two of the $70 drives which offer similar low power draw. In the case of WD, it's either the $140 2.5" drive or the $70 3.5 drive.

If you want drives larger than 1TB, then for the foreseeable future, you are are going to be limited to 3.5" drives. Remember the cutting edge in notebook drives is now at the 1TB capacity, and these initial drives will have reliability problems and will be higher priced. In the 3.5" class, the threshold is at the 2TB capacity. So, you can either get the same capacity for half the cost or twice the capacity at the same cost.

Then you also brought up the mounting. I have a JBOD box with trays that will mount either 2.5" or 3.5" drives. The 3.5" drives use side screws and the 2.5" drives use screws up through the bottom through 4 holes that align the drive with the SATA socket on the back plane. Laying an empty ReadyNAS tray upside down over a 3.5" drive and then a 2.5" drive on top of that and aligning the SATA connectors, there are several points. The ReadyNAS tray would have to be re-engineered to take 2.5" drives as two of the mount holes for the 2.5" fall right at the end of the tray bottom (edge is the centerline of the mount holes) and one of the other two falls in the middle of one of the 16 vent holes.

Given the disadvantages of using matching 2.5" drives in a Raid configuration (cost) and the cost of re-engineering the trays, I would say there is little likely hood of a ReadyNAS using 2.5" drives anytime soon.

FWIW - the JBOD box I was referring to provided the 20 screws for 5 3.5" drives but no screws for the 2.5" drives, which indicates they also are not anticipating a large demand for this arrangement.

About WD's Green drives. Their marketing dept managed to obscure the waters by talking about variable speeds, however data taken in the early reviews conclusively point to these being 5400 rpm drives. There is some discussion of this here: http://techreport.com/articles.x/15769

Hence, I think, Seagate then coming out with their 5900 rpm drives which could them be marketed as the "fastest low powered drive".

for me, spindle speed isnt an issue. infact, 2.5 vs 3.5" isnt something im overly concerned in.
however, the WD scorpio blue 1tb drives are £120. to me, that's affordable. almost to the point of considering it over a cheaper 3.5" drive. granted it's new tech so there could well be teething problems, but i would like to see 2.5" support on readyNAS's.

alot of new servers are running 2.5" sas drives, and imo spindle based drives are on borrowed time now SSD's (while currently expensive) are becoming more mainstream - the capacities are increasing and they are starting to become a valid replacement.

i think the only thing stopping users using 2.5" drives in readynas's is a mounting method in the 3.5" caddies. i bet those 2.5>3.5" adaptors dont align the sata&power ports up to be in the same place as a 3.5" drive. all it would take is for Readynas engineering to design a couple a drilled metal adaptor plates todo this and not a full re-design of the caddy or for a native 2.5" readynas model.
adaptor plate bolts to 2.5" drive, and plate then bolts to the readynas caddy. this would be a purchasable extra from netgear.

i think power is a big consideration in my want for 2.5" support rather than anything else.

im currently using 2x 1tb 3.5" drives and i do forsee a possible upgrade in the next year or 2 for extra capacity. hopefully 2.5" will be an option on either 1.5 or 2tb capacities.

I just noted in another thread that an NVX with 4 drives would draw 67 watts when all four drives were spun up and operating and only 37 watts when they had spun down and were idle. Thats not a very power hungry device. In fact the power supply in the NVX would choke if it tried to boot your PC (wiring to the plug is different so could not be connected).

Fact is, 3.5" drives will always have a higher capacity available that 2.5" spindle or even 2.5" SSDs. For example the 1TB 2.5" is as I posted earlier the leading edge of 2.5" spindle technology and twice the price of 3.5" 1TB drives. As far as a 1TB SSD drive is concerned, Newegg actually has three listed, two of which are PCI Express cards with 8 SODIM sockets with memory modules and costs either $3.500 or $4,400. The third is in a 2.5" format but still costs almost $3,200. Thats a long way with being prince competitive with a 1TB 3.5" drive at $75.

What this boils down to is that if there is ever a demand for 2.5" drives, it may happen, but as long as the 3.5" drive is the desired drive by the vast majority of users it will remain unlikely.

Remember that there are two definintions for RAID - 1) Redundant Array of Independent Drives and 2) Redundant Array of Inexpensive Drives. Enterprise devices will always go for the first, using more expensive enterprise class drives for their longer life and reliability and consumer devices will then toward the latter using more reasonably priced consumer drives so they can get higher capacity for less cost.

And we have not even touched on the fact that not all 3.5" drives are compatible much less the 2.5" drives.

I’d just like to say that I’d also be extremely interested in seeing an approved 2.5" drive & adapter for ReadyNAS. I simply don’t need 12TB of storage space and would love to be able to save energy and reduce noise/heat by using 2.5" disks. Why use 30W of power when you can do the same work in <3W? :)

There are some adapter products on the market that would probably work, but one of the reasons I use ReadyNAS instead of rolling my own is because I want a reliable, tested solution that won’t leave me scrambling for backups if a disk swap goes bad. Any movement in this direction would be greatly appreciated by me, and probably a good number of other people, especially as SSDs become more prominent and affordable. The name of the game here is increased reliability and reduced power usage, not speed. :)

Hi, veehexx

I had used 2.5-inch drives with my Duo for almost 3 years using almimum plate to fix drives on trays.
See pics from Flickr: pic1,pic2, pic3

And I am currently using 2.5-inch drives with my Ultra 2 and Duo for half a year using 2.5-inch to 3.5-inch adaptor case: Icy Dock MB882SP-1S-1B and MB982IP-1S.
See pics from Flickr: pic1,pic2,pic3

There is no big problem since mechanical specifications of SATA connectors of 2.5-inch drives and that of 3.5-inch drives are idential, regardless it is officially supported or not.

It only makes economic sense if you have the 2.5" drives laying around, since a 3.5" drive is less expensive per gigabyte than a 2.5". I am using 3TB 3.5" drives now, and it will be a long while before they have 2.5" drives that large.

Well, some people love bigger capacity and lower cost per byte of 3.5-inch drives. Some people love quietness, lower heat generation and lower power consumption of 2.5-inch drives. The priority is all up to each user.

Bumping this old thread with info about how to do it for free, and easily too... basically the holes in the 2.5" disk aligns perfectly outside the tray, and with one of the large holes in the tray. You'll have to cut out a tiny bit to use all four mounting holes, though.

http://www.magnuswedberg.com/index.php?doc=2_5_inch_disks_in_a_Netgear_Readynas

I did this because I had a 500GB laptop drive around. Also, I like to tinker.

mangrove

It's interesting. I thought same thing first but abandoned the idea because it would be very tough to make holes in such steel plate without power tools.

By the way, I checked dimensions of screw holes and found that to locate SATA connector of 2.5-inch drive at exactly same place as 3.5-inch drive, two holes in the connector side will be half covered by tray (pic).

So, if I do the same as you did, the connector would be 1 or 1.5 mm longer than normal position. It would not make any trouble?