I just bought a ReadyNAS ULTRA 6 for a great price of less than USD 600,- including a 2TB Seagate disk. Waste of space with only 1 x 2TB, so need to get some new disks...The plan was to fill it up with 3TB disks, but i have seen that the prices on 4 TB disks from Seagate now has dropped drastically and .. why not buy 4TB disks to fill it up with instead?The model i own is: RNDU6000-100PES - ReadyNAS Ultra 6Disk i wish to buy is: ST4000DM000 - Seagate Barracuda® 4TBThere are NO 4TB disks on the compatibility list at http://www.readynas.com/?page_id=82Questions are..:1. Will it work with 4TB disks?2. What "traps" might i fall into if i do not buy all 6 at the same time?3. By reading the forum, there are references to 16TB limits.. and basically no option to set all into one big XRAID2 partition ??4. What is the advise on memory on the box? should i expand it from the default 1GB which it comes with (If possible)?Thanks for any help on this guys (and girls)!

Personally I would avoid the newer barracudas. Search this forum on them generally, and you will see a lot of issues posted. 1. As far as 4 TB goes, the Hitachi one on the ultra 6+ HCL is probably your safest bet. Likely they will work on your platform. Keep in mind that Netgear won't provide support on disk-related issues if you leave the HCL.2. The main "traps" are the two expansion limits. (a) 8 TB volume growth over the lifetime of the volume and (b) can't cross the 16 TB volume size3. You can create an XRAID2 volume which is >= 16 TB. But you need to do that with a factory default (wiping your data). You can't expand through the 16 TB limit.4. I'd leave the memory alone unless you find that you are running an application which is memory-starved. For normal storage the stock 1 GB is enough. Upgrading memory is another showstopper for Netgear support.

Thanks StephenAs this is a brand new, any factory default setting would not be a problem. There are no data yet on it (no disks so far).So, i guess buying all disks at the same time is the only option due to limitations in current software. Linux itself no longer have this limit, so this should be fixed in the software soon i hope.So far i have been able to identify the following 4TB disks available. The issue with jumping from Seagate (same series as the one 2TB that came with the box) is the price. All other disks are approx 30% -> 200% higher in cost.Table below is Manufacturers product number followed by description and price level)Seagate:ST4000DM000 - SEAGATE DESKTOP 4TB 5900RPM - (Cheapest)ST4000NM0033 - SEAGATE CONSTELLATION ES.3 4TB 7200RPM - (130% up in price)Western Digital:WD4001FAEX - WD BLACK 3.5" 4TB 7200RPM - (80% up in price)WD4000FYYZ - WD RE 3.5" 4TB 7200RPM - (120% up in price)WDBYBL0040HNC-EASN - WD SENTINEL REPLACEMENT DRIVE 4TB - (150% up in price)Hitachi:0S03356 - HITACHI DESKSTAR 7K4000 4TB 7200RPM - (30% up in price)0S03363 - HITACHI DESKSTAR 7K4000 4TB 7200RPM - (50% up in price)HUS724040ALE64 - HITACHI ULTRASTAR 7K4000 4TB 7200RPM - (200% up in price)Swapping to Hitachi will make the setup about USD 450,- more expensive than use of the Seagate disks that cost only around USD 225,- each.I really hope that Netgear will give us an update on the HCL soon so we can be sure to buy the correct disks and also give us more to chose between.The box have been on the market a long time now and so have most of the disks above.

Just to clarify - both the expansion limits are due to the underlying linux tools, not the upper layer software.For instance, to expand the volume across the 16 TiB limit requires you to expand the inode addresses from 32 bits to 64. This is not safe with the linux tools used in the x86 line.

Any update on this?I'm looking at expanding my Ultra 4 with 4x2TB to 4x4TB, and the Seagate ST4000DM000 are the cheapest on the market around here, they come in at around € 150 / piece, which is half the price of the hitachi HUS724040ALE640 (only 4TB on the hcl). Seagate even claims that they can be used for NAS devices (http://www.seagate.com/files/www-content/product-content/barracuda-fam/desktop-hdd/barracuda-7200-14/en-gb/docs/barracuda-desktop-hdd-ds-1770-1-1212gb.pdf) and I've used seagates before in my NV without issues.

Here is what I have. Not really the answer you are looking for, but it should give you an idea. Note that I did a factory reset, then added the drives. FrontView only reports 14TB, but Finder notes over 15 TB.Here is the proof:Finally, I am thinking of buying these 4TB drives as they are CHEAP and HGST drives (Hitachi HDS5C4040ALE630): http://www.amazon.com/HGST-Touro-Deskto ... dp_productYeah, you are going to need to do some hacking, voiding the warranty on the external HDD's and they are not on Netgear's HCL, but it looks like they work and comparably priced to the discs that you are looking to buy :http://www.amazon.com/review/R14S2O23SJ ... _rtr_alt_1These are my next pruchase to replace my 2TB WD green drives.

4TB disks on ReadyNas Ultra 6? | NETGEAR Communities

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StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 16, 2014
It's a volume limit, not a raw drive capacity limit. So space needed for redundancy doesn't count.

4x4TB with single redundancy xraid2 has a 12 TB volume. You need 5x4TB to get 16.

4x4TB with dual redundancy xraid2 and an eight TB volume - 6x4TB gets you to 16.
tijgert
Guide
Aug 30, 2014
To expand on this issue: will the RNDU6000 work with the 6TB WD Red drives?
I mean to populate it with 6x6TB's in Raid 5... but since the drives didn't exist when the RNDU6000 went EOL there isn't an up to date compatability list...
StephenB
Guru - Experienced User
Aug 30, 2014
The drives aren't on the compatibility list, so you wouldn't get support, and Netgear hasn't verified that they are compatible. If you purchased around your September 2011, your warranty would run out in about 3 weeks anyway, so the support might not matter much to you.

There is no fundamental technical here (assuming the drives are in fact compatible). So it ought to work. If it turned out not to work for some reason (after you've spent the $1800 for the drives) you might have to get an new NAS (for instance RN316) to protect your investment in the drives.
tijgert
Guide
Aug 30, 2014
Thanks for the reply, appreciate it.
I was asking the same question in two topics because both topics were relevant to my question and vice versa.

To be future similar question asking users of service I will gladly point them to that other topic -> http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=2464&p=432215#p432215

I no longer have tech support so I'll have to chance it. I just wanted a reason not to try it and so far there are none.
Also, another topic mentioned that any size drive should work on any x86 box as GPT drives are not size limited. They are on ARM boxes though.

So drives are on order (plus I can return the unused ones anyway).
I will post my results in the OTHER topic as compatability of these drives are directly applicable to that topic.

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4TB disks on ReadyNas Ultra 6?

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