NETGEAR is aware of a growing number of phone and online scams. To learn how to stay safe click here.
Forum Discussion
My Experience with NVX BE and 4x WD60EFRX 6TB Drives
All,
I recently decided to upgrade my trusty NVX Business Edition ReadyNAS from 4x 1TB drives to 4x 6TB drives. After reading many posts on these forums I quickly realised that 6TB drives were not yet listed on the HCL for my NVX unit but many believed there should not be any issues with the latest RAIDiator version. To realise the full capacity of the 4x 6TB drives in a RAID5 (X-RAID) configuration I would need to perform a Factory Default boot and configure the new disks as a new configuration as I would have hit the expansion limits from my humble 4x 1TB original configuration.
The drives I chose were the Western Digital WD60EFRX Red NAS HDD due to many WD Red drives being listed on other ReadyNAS HCLs, other support forum questions relating to these drives with positive feedback and these drives being produced for NAS applications.
So I completed a backup of all important data via USB Drive and mounted the drives ready for the Factory Default Boot. The RAIDiator version was already at version 4.2.26 so good to go.
My first attempt appeared to be going well. The volume was being created but then about 5 minutes in an error message appeared on the front display stating the file system installation failed and RAIDar was reporting 'Corrupt Root'. Now after reading many posts the Corrupt Root error appears to be a common one. I rebooted the NVX and managed to access the Admin website. Interestingly enough the 4th drive listed as CH4: was not allocated and the 4 LED on the unit was flashing. The Volume and Disk indicators were also amber within the Admin console.
So I re-attempted the above process with only 3 drives thinking that maybe the NVX can not create a volume of 24TB (16-17TB useable X-RAID) and was prepared to mark the 4th drive as a hot spare. The same thing happened again with 3 drives only this time it was CH3: that was marked as not allocated and the 3 LED on the unit was flashing. The only difference during this attempt was that the 3rd drive was marked as 'Resync'. The LCD display also displayed the resync percentage counter so I decided to leave this running.
About 18 hours later the resync had completed and voila! I had a 3 drive 18TB X-RAID volume (10-11TB useable) and all was well. Hmmm... I wonder what would happen if I add the 4th drive? The NVX unit located the drive and automatically attempted to expand the volume. The NVX then went into a 'Restriping' process and is currently 5.4% complete with an estimated completion time of 44 hours to complete. I am hoping that after this process has completed I will be left with a 16+TB useable volume.
I am not sure why the initial configuration failed. I am not sure why I needed to take the steps taken in that order to achieve the desired configuration. I guess the real questions I have are if I am presented with an X-RAID volume using all 4 drives and all administration consoles and LED lights are green and OK, can I trust this volume? Will it be stable and reliable?
Sorry for the length of this post. I just wanted to share my experience with a legacy unit and larger disks and give something back to you guys who helped me to get here! I will post back my success/failure during this week.
Best regards,
Buzz.
I recently decided to upgrade my trusty NVX Business Edition ReadyNAS from 4x 1TB drives to 4x 6TB drives. After reading many posts on these forums I quickly realised that 6TB drives were not yet listed on the HCL for my NVX unit but many believed there should not be any issues with the latest RAIDiator version. To realise the full capacity of the 4x 6TB drives in a RAID5 (X-RAID) configuration I would need to perform a Factory Default boot and configure the new disks as a new configuration as I would have hit the expansion limits from my humble 4x 1TB original configuration.
The drives I chose were the Western Digital WD60EFRX Red NAS HDD due to many WD Red drives being listed on other ReadyNAS HCLs, other support forum questions relating to these drives with positive feedback and these drives being produced for NAS applications.
So I completed a backup of all important data via USB Drive and mounted the drives ready for the Factory Default Boot. The RAIDiator version was already at version 4.2.26 so good to go.
My first attempt appeared to be going well. The volume was being created but then about 5 minutes in an error message appeared on the front display stating the file system installation failed and RAIDar was reporting 'Corrupt Root'. Now after reading many posts the Corrupt Root error appears to be a common one. I rebooted the NVX and managed to access the Admin website. Interestingly enough the 4th drive listed as CH4: was not allocated and the 4 LED on the unit was flashing. The Volume and Disk indicators were also amber within the Admin console.
So I re-attempted the above process with only 3 drives thinking that maybe the NVX can not create a volume of 24TB (16-17TB useable X-RAID) and was prepared to mark the 4th drive as a hot spare. The same thing happened again with 3 drives only this time it was CH3: that was marked as not allocated and the 3 LED on the unit was flashing. The only difference during this attempt was that the 3rd drive was marked as 'Resync'. The LCD display also displayed the resync percentage counter so I decided to leave this running.
About 18 hours later the resync had completed and voila! I had a 3 drive 18TB X-RAID volume (10-11TB useable) and all was well. Hmmm... I wonder what would happen if I add the 4th drive? The NVX unit located the drive and automatically attempted to expand the volume. The NVX then went into a 'Restriping' process and is currently 5.4% complete with an estimated completion time of 44 hours to complete. I am hoping that after this process has completed I will be left with a 16+TB useable volume.
I am not sure why the initial configuration failed. I am not sure why I needed to take the steps taken in that order to achieve the desired configuration. I guess the real questions I have are if I am presented with an X-RAID volume using all 4 drives and all administration consoles and LED lights are green and OK, can I trust this volume? Will it be stable and reliable?
Sorry for the length of this post. I just wanted to share my experience with a legacy unit and larger disks and give something back to you guys who helped me to get here! I will post back my success/failure during this week.
Best regards,
Buzz.
7 Replies
Replies have been turned off for this discussion
- I am thinking your current expansion will probably fail. You cannot expand over the 16 TiB threshold, and you will end up slightly over that.
If it does fail, I suggest that you do a factory reset from Frontview, and see if the corrupt root issue happens again. - Thanks StephenB.
Currently at 33.4%. I will post back during this week the outcome. - So the restriping process went all the way to 100% and as suggested failed.
I performed a Factory Reset within Frontview and the NAS rebooted itself and is sat with all LED and Power Button lights blinking at the same time for the past 30 minutes or so. LCD not displaying anything. Is this behaviour expected? Is it performing a scan of all the disks?
Also RAIDar does not detect the unit.
Cheers,
Buzz. - In 4.2.6 (3200 only) and 4.2.7 (all models) a 64-bit kernel began to be used by systems with a 64-bit CPU to add support for volumes > 16TB. At the time with 2TB disks the highest capacity available this was only possible on the 3200. See http://www.readynas.com/RAIDiator_x86_4_2_7_Notes
The NVX has a 32-bit CPU, so I think a 16TB volume capacity might be a hard limit.
I will try to find out about this from our engineers. - @mdgm - thanks for your help.
Taking your comment and the advice given by StephenB, the default available volume size after overheads and snapshot allocation did just creep above the 16TiB limit.
I have created a volume within Frontview of 16000000MB which appears to have worked (currently resyncing). Assuming the ReadyNAS definition of MB is MiB then I think this is the maximum volume size I can create.
I guess I am lucky in that I am only loosing a few 100GBs as the available space after overheads is around the 16TB limit using 4x 6TB drives.
Thanks for your help.
Buzz. - Assuming there is a limit of 16TB per volume then multiple volumes should be O.K. however any given disk can only be included in two volumes.
So say 12TB drives work in the future I think it might be possible to create two volumes of 16TB each.
Of course it would be preferable to get a newer system.
The NVX (BE) and NVX Pioneer models are the only desktop ReadyNAS units with an Intel 32-bit CPU.
All our other desktop ReadyNAS units with Intel CPUs have 64-bit ones and support volumes larger than 16TB (though on RAIDiator-x86 4.2.x you cannot expand past 16TB you have to do a factory default with the drives in place).
I would suggest you move to a newer ReadyNAS before you next need higher capacity disks.
Oh and with a 16TB volume I would strongly recommend you maintain regular backups (which you should do anyway) if the NAS is primary storage for important data. - Understood.
Thanks once again for your help.
B.
NETGEAR Academy
Boost your skills with the Netgear Academy - Get trained, certified and stay ahead with the latest Netgear technology!
Join Us!
