Disk/Volume Encryption

immy wrote:
So let me get this straight, 3TB drive comes onto the market today. Customers have been demanding encryption for years and 3TB drive is given priority?

Yes. However it's not that simple. It's been obvious for quite a while that 3TB disks would come late 2010, with the arrival of the SeaGate 3TB external the first product to use a 3TB disk. NetGear has been working to prepare for this. They have added support for 4k sectors this year (4k sectors are required for disks >2TB) and will work to address further compatibility issues specific to using 3TB disks if they arise.

NetGear's competition will also move to qualify 3TB drives. Supporting high capacity disks is something all NAS manufacturers would see as a high priority.

immy wrote:
Hello...... It's going to be a long time before anyone sane installs a 3TB drive in a production NAS, whether it be a home user or a business user.

I disagree. So long as you store important data on two devices at all times and wait for NetGear to qualify the disk before purchasing there shouldn't be great concern for home users. On 6-bay x86 ReadyNAS you can also use dual-redundancy (which I recommend btw). Personally I'm considering whether to use 3TB disks in a backup ReadyNAS soon.

immy wrote:
What about Business users for whom 'Encryption' is an unconditional requirement?

You can encrypt data using a PC as has already been mentioned.

immy wrote:
There are many variations to encryption, I just used the bog standard configuration. I am sure once tweaked performance can be improved however I would gladly give up performance over security.

Performance can be improved, but it'll still obviously be much slower than not using encryption. Obviously a lot of testing would be required to determine optimum levels of encryption for various models and perhaps a level that is suitable for the whole range of x86 devices.