I bought an NV+ a couple of years back and was happy to see the improved support for Timemachine. But, with just 2 1TB drives I was limited to ~600GB. I did my research and settled on the Western Digital WD20EARS drives - I got 4 of them.I did the RAIDar upgrade and factory reset and all went well (saved the original drives as a "backup" plan and started clean with the 4, 2TB drives).I got 5.4 TB's of space - right in line with my expectations. But could not expand the timemachine space above 2TB. After quite a bit of searching, I discovered that the SPARC based machines - including my NV+, do not support files greater than 2TB, nor are there any plans to.So - my questions are, why even bother selling and certifying new 2TB and larger drives if your file system is stuck in the past? Why even continue to SELL the NV+, when they have no business living in the future? Why not make a note in the certification (like was done to point out that the 4k sector size required a factory reset) saying that timemachine could not make use of more than 2TB? Just what OS do you have on this that can't handle great than a 2TB file size?I bought this (at quite a bit more than they're selling now) because it was upgradable and a solution for the future. Turns out the future was only a year or two away.--Not sure if this was the original reference, but this the specific limitation I'm referencing: viewtopic.php?f=71&t=49058

I hear you, but have hard time agreeing with your rationale. You bought a mature product 2 years ago. The NV+ has been on the market since 2006 and is based on a 32 bit Sparc design. The NVX was Netgear's state of the art 2 years ago and is based on a 32 bit x86 design. x86 Linux development is moving forward more quickly than Sparc 32 bit development.Overall Netgear is doing a good job supporting legacy hardware.Just for reference, many people purchased Intel based motherboards in 2009/2010 that are not compatible (natively) with >2TB disks? The industry knew 3TB disks were coming but many boards only support MFT which maxes out @ 2TB. Should those consumers be more upset than you?

Last I checked (this past Friday) the NV+ is still in stores. Purchasing a motherboard is quite a bit different than buying a rather specific, standalone solution.

The NV+ is still in production, but it's entry level hardware now. It's a mature product and targeted at the home user many of whom would struggle to get anywhere close to the limits of what the NV+ can handle.How many Macs are you backing up?

I was backing up an old tower and a MacBook when Time Machine reached the limit of the 600GB share I had. I wanted to add my new iMac which I use for amateur music production, which is why up upgraded to 4 2TB drives. If I had access to say, 5 of the 5.4TBs available, I'd be fine - and I'd be set for backups for quite some time. But being limited to 2TB is a limit I could easily reach with audio editing added into the mix.

Though unsupported you can backup your Macs to different shares. You can set a quota for the user granted access to these shares up to 2TB. So you could have one/more Macs backing up to the supported share, and others backing up to other shares.If using Lion you'll need to add "options:tm" into the Netatalk config for the ordinary shares you wish to backup to. See http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=55166You'll also want to configure the ordinary share you are backing up to, to mount when the user logs in.

NV+ 2TB Limit - Was Disappointed, Now Happy

13 Replies

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claykin
Aspirant
Aug 07, 2011
I hear you, but have hard time agreeing with your rationale. You bought a mature product 2 years ago. The NV+ has been on the market since 2006 and is based on a 32 bit Sparc design. The NVX was Netgear's state of the art 2 years ago and is based on a 32 bit x86 design. x86 Linux development is moving forward more quickly than Sparc 32 bit development.

Overall Netgear is doing a good job supporting legacy hardware.

Just for reference, many people purchased Intel based motherboards in 2009/2010 that are not compatible (natively) with >2TB disks? The industry knew 3TB disks were coming but many boards only support MFT which maxes out @ 2TB. Should those consumers be more upset than you?
jawknee
Aspirant
Aug 07, 2011
Last I checked (this past Friday) the NV+ is still in stores. Purchasing a motherboard is quite a bit different than buying a rather specific, standalone solution.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 07, 2011
The NV+ is still in production, but it's entry level hardware now. It's a mature product and targeted at the home user many of whom would struggle to get anywhere close to the limits of what the NV+ can handle.

How many Macs are you backing up?
jawknee
Aspirant
Aug 07, 2011
I was backing up an old tower and a MacBook when Time Machine reached the limit of the 600GB share I had. I wanted to add my new iMac which I use for amateur music production, which is why up upgraded to 4 2TB drives. If I had access to say, 5 of the 5.4TBs available, I'd be fine - and I'd be set for backups for quite some time. But being limited to 2TB is a limit I could easily reach with audio editing added into the mix.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 07, 2011
Though unsupported you can backup your Macs to different shares. You can set a quota for the user granted access to these shares up to 2TB. So you could have one/more Macs backing up to the supported share, and others backing up to other shares.

If using Lion you'll need to add "options:tm" into the Netatalk config for the ordinary shares you wish to backup to. See http://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopic.php?f=71&t=55166

You'll also want to configure the ordinary share you are backing up to, to mount when the user logs in.
jawknee
Aspirant
Aug 07, 2011
Ah - this may be what I need - but when I try to ssh to the IP address - I get an immediate Connections refused (trying to log in as "admin"). Earlier today I tried to find an option in RAIDar to enable the ssh service - no luck. Do I need to use the ssh add-on to log in? http://www.readynas.com/?p=4203

I'm OK with editing the config file and setting up a separate 2TB share - that would be good.
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 07, 2011
You don't have to use the SSH add-on. You can install the SSH add-on and then login as root and do it that way if you wish. If you're comfortable with using this, this method would probably be best to do this.

Alternatively you can download the Config Backup (via System > Config Backup > Backup), extract the zip contents and edit the relevant files using an editor that won't muck up the formatting (I recommend using TextEdit on a Mac). Then you can zip up the folders/files you wish to restore again. In this case you'll want to highlight the "etc" folder and create a zip of that and then restore that. If you zip up the folder _READYNAS_CONFIG... then the files in "etc" you be restored to /_READYNAS_CONFIG.../etc which is the wrong location.
jawknee
Aspirant
Aug 07, 2011
Ah - OK, I'm installing the Add-On now - sounds a lot simpler (I do Linux for a living so this is not out of my comfort zone). Much thanks so - far, I should know if this will do what I need soon.
jawknee
Aspirant
Aug 08, 2011
OK - I set up a StudioBackup share and user. I'm not sure how to "configure the ordinary share you are backing up to, to mount when the user logs in." I noted that the user's home dir in /etc/passwd was /tmp - I changed that to /c/StudioBackup and changed /bin/false to /bin/true - still not showing up. I set the user to use /bin/bash, logged in and confirmed that /c/StudioBackup is in place. It wasn't clear to me - do I need to upgrade to Lion to use the new share? If so - that may be a while - Avid can take a while before ProTools can run on the latest s/w. If I don't need Lion, I'm apparently still missing something - but I'll take a another look tomorrow.

Thanks!
mdgm-ntgr
NETGEAR Employee Retired
Aug 08, 2011
What Security mode are you using under Security > Security Mode?

Did you specify "options:tm" for the share?

Why are you setting the share as the user's home share? You can add a user, add a share and configure the share so that only that user has access to it via Frontview. That is the proper way to add users and shares.

When I was talking about using SSH that was in regards to editing the config file to include "options:tm" for an existing share you'd created via Frontview.

You may also need to copy the ".com.apple.timemachine.supported" file from /c/.timemachine/.com.apple.timemachine.supported and paste it in your new share for it to be recognised by Time Machine.

To auto mount a share on login, mount it and save the login details to the keychain then go to Command Menu > System Preferences > Users & Groups > Your User > Login Items, unlock the system preferences pane (if not already unlocked) so you can make changes and drag and drop the mounted share to add it to the list