NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
4TB hard disks
It is early days yet but 4TB disks are starting to trickle on to the market. I am aware so far of two different makes being launched they being Seagate and Hitachi. Hitachi at least have now made a kit available for an 'internal' 3.5" 4TB drive.
While NetGear and also unlikely any ReadyNAS users have yet had a chance to test these, I was wondering if the Jedi or anyone else could comment as to whether in generic terms a ReadyNAS Pro running firmware 4.2.19 would in theory be able to support and use a set of 4TB drives? Please note I am not asking if the Seagate or Hitachi is supported I am asking if any hypothetical 4TB drive would work or are drive capacities now bigger than the ReadyNAS can cope with?
In my own case I currently have officially supported 2TB Hitachi drives but they are getting full, I could obviously go to 3TB drives but my thought was to go straight to 4TB drives in a little while.
While NetGear and also unlikely any ReadyNAS users have yet had a chance to test these, I was wondering if the Jedi or anyone else could comment as to whether in generic terms a ReadyNAS Pro running firmware 4.2.19 would in theory be able to support and use a set of 4TB drives? Please note I am not asking if the Seagate or Hitachi is supported I am asking if any hypothetical 4TB drive would work or are drive capacities now bigger than the ReadyNAS can cope with?
In my own case I currently have officially supported 2TB Hitachi drives but they are getting full, I could obviously go to 3TB drives but my thought was to go straight to 4TB drives in a little while.
30 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- Yes. Be aware of expansion limitations noted above.
- Any news about Netgear/ReadyNas supporting 4TB disks ?
Im would love to swap my 5 x 3TB disks out with 4TB - Do you have a model of 4TB disk on hand that you are planning to use?
There are a couple of expansion issues to be aware of though:
1. You cannot expand past 16TB. You must factory default with that capacity in place. So if you want a single-redundant volume with 6x4TB disks you'll need to backup your data and do a factory reset. A dual-redundant volume would come in under the 16TB limit
2. Limit of 8TB for online expansion of 64-bit system (e.g. Pro) using EXT4 filesystem e.g. if original volume capacity after last factory default was 4TB you can't expand beyond 12TB online.
Is this a permanent problem or is it likely to be resolved in a firmware update?
I am considering purchasing an Ultra6 and was intending on starting with a couple of 4TB drives.
Given the above (and the serious problem of finding 16TB spare to backup NAS - not to mention transferring it all back and forth) it seems that 4TB drives would be a waste and I could save money picking 3TB instead
Is there an solution to this?
Cheers
Rob- Until/unless the Linux community releases stable updates to relevant expansion utilities the problem would remain.
- Ok. So just for utter clarification. Let me see if I have everything correct.
You are saying that b/c of the expansion limitations (which is 8tb), that if you start out with 5x4tb drives and then try to increase that to 6x4tb drives later, you will only have a total of 14(ish)tb worth or usable space. Which would leave you with RAID 5 with 2 Parity disks?
But if you want to start out with 18(ish)tb of usable space with 1 Parity disk then you need start out with all 6 disk in place? Emlcombo wrote:
You are saying that b/c of the expansion limitations (which is 8tb), that if you start out with 5x4tb drives and then try to increase that to 6x4tb drives later, you will only have a total of 14(ish)tb worth or usable space.
Yes. Expansion would fail. You should select to migrate to dual-redundancy under Volumes in Frontview before adding the sixth diskEmlcombo wrote:
Which would leave you with RAID 5 with 2 Parity disks?
No. The parity is distributed amongst all disks. RAID-5 is single-redundant. RAID-6 is dual-redudant. Have a read up on RAID levels (you can google search for it)Emlcombo wrote:
But if you want to start out with 18(ish)tb of usable space with 1 Parity disk then you need start out with all 6 disk in place?
Yes
The new ReadyNAS OS models don't have these limitations but due to the different filesystem you couldn't simply move your disks across to a new device. You would have to transfer your data across your network.- Not sure if this is the right forum/thread, but here's my question:
I have an NVX running 4x2TB drives. Is it possible to replace them all, one by one, with 4TB drives, and do an in-place expansion to 4x4TB?
I suppose it comes down to two questions of compatibility: Will the 4TB drives work at all, and even if they do, will the array size be too large? - There are several posters who have run into serious issues expanding their NVX, so you probably want to wait until they report the issues are resolved.
New x86 firmware does work with 4 TB drives (though there are none on the NVX HCL). I'm not sure if they don't work, or if Netgear simply didn't bother to test them.
You cannot expand an array more than 8 TB larger than its starting point. If your initial size was 1x2TB then you can't expand it all the way up to 12 TB. Alternatives are to do a factory default with all the new drives in place, or to attempt an off-line expansion with ssh. With either path, you will need a backup. - Whilst there are no 4TB disks on the compatibility list for the NVX, 4TB disks *might* work for you. What disks were in the NAS when you last did a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything). If all four 2TB disks were installed when you last did a factory default you should be O.K. If there were any less you would need to backup your data and do a factory default.
Before replacing disks to expand your volume please downgrade to 4.2.19 or update to 4.2.23 (due for release soon, currently in public beta). There is a bug in 4.2.20-4.2.22 on 32-bit systems (e.g. NVX).
Edit: beaten.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
