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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alicato
Aspirant
Jun 13, 2013
so will the seagates work? ST4000DM000 - Seagate Barracuda® 4TB x6 in my new ultra6 ? please advise as i have a nas with no hdd.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Jun 13, 2013
Probably, but they are not on the HCL for your NAS. So if you do choose them it is even more important than otherwise that you make sure that you backup your important data regularly
diablo668
Aspirant
Jun 14, 2013
alicato wrote:
so will the seagates work? ST4000DM000 - Seagate Barracuda® 4TB x6 in my new ultra6 ? please advise as i have a nas with no hdd.

Just got mine today for my ultra 4, first one is inserted, disk detected nicely, rsync started... so far so good. I'll Keep you posted
diablo668
Aspirant
Jun 24, 2013
All 4 of the disk are in now, all synced up and expanded.

The only thing I've noticed so far are some SMART values that don't make sense:

Head Flying Hours 56087977918683
Total LBAs Written 3926851136
Total LBAs Read 23416466810

These values where high from the moment I put the first disk into the device. But seagate is known for not strictly following the rules regarding SMART... so nothing to worry about.

Hope this helps for anybody consindering buying the Seagate ST4000DM000 4TB
TeknoJnky
Hero
Jun 24, 2013
I'm using 4tb drives in my pro business and ultra 4.

my sig has the drive models.
Initial_G
Aspirant
Nov 30, 2013
Don't mean to revive an old thread but wanted to confirm that I just upgraded my existing Ultra 6 with 6x 2TB disks with 6x 4TB ( Seagate ST4000VN000 ) disks. I know they are listed on the HCL for current models BUT they aren't currently on the HCL for legacy so just wanted to confirm that they do seem to run fine.

Also I was originally on RAIDiator-x86-4.2.21 but have also now upgraded to RAIDiator-x86-4.2.24

Current Configuration: RAID Level X-RAID2, 6 disks (with dual redundancy)
Total usable size is about 14TB
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Nov 30, 2013
Initial_G RAIDiator-x86-4.2.25 is available now too: http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=1&t=74129
Initial_G
Aspirant
Nov 30, 2013
doh really? i just finished updating and did a factory reset >_>
marky1
Aspirant
Dec 25, 2013
Sorry to revive an old(er) thread but am I reading this correctly: if you are willing to factory reset, you can put 6 x 4tb hard drives in the Ultra 6 and have a usable volume thats > 16TB??
fastfwd
Virtuoso
Dec 25, 2013
marky wrote:
if you are willing to factory reset, you can put 6 x 4tb hard drives in the Ultra 6 and have a usable volume thats > 16TB??

Yes, you can put all 6 drives in and then factory default. If you choose to format your RAID array as RAID-5 (single-disk redundancy), you will end up with an array of approximately 20TB.

Doing that, though, is probably a bad idea. When a drive fails in a RAID5 array, your data will be unprotected from further failures until you replace the failed drive and rebuild... But with an array that large, it would not be unexpected for an error to appear on one of the other drives during the rebuild. A better plan would be to format the 6x4TB array as RAID6, which will provide two-disk redundancy. You'll "only" get 16TB, but your setup will be much more reliable.

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4TB disks on ReadyNas Ultra 6?

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