"OS6" - a question or three

garyd9 wrote:

If I took that older Pro BE box (not Pro 6), swapped out the CPU with an E6700 (which seems to be the highest performing dual core processor known to work on that box regardless of which MB revision is in there), swapped the 1x1GB DDR2 out with 2x2GB sticks, and put OS6 on it (which would void the warranty that's already expired)... would that give me something comparable to the newer 516 box? I realize I'd still be missing some hardware interfaces such as USB3 and eSATA. However, in day to day use as a network attached storage device (and not for things like transcoding) would it be nearly the same as a stock 516? Perhaps a clearer question would be if such a converted box would be representative of what I'd get in purchasing a 516.

You may find the Pro BE as is is good enough for what you want already (what speeds do you get with that?), but if you want to do upgrades you can. So it's up to you if you want to try OS6 if you try it without any upgrades first or do the upgrades then update to OS6. Before replacing the CPU you should make sure you are running the latest BIOS (you can check by looking in bios_ver.log). I would suggest the BIOS upgrade add-on should be installed before upgrading to OS6 as the BIOS upgrade add-on is written for OS4 and won't run on OS6.

Note it is possible to downgrade a legacy ReadyNAS running OS6 back to OS4 but this also requires a factory default.

Apart from the CPU and RAM, the key advantages of the 516 would be the 5 year warranty, the USB3 and eSATA and the HDMI port (for possible future use).

garyd9 wrote:
Jumping back to the dual redundancy and OS6... The method used to get that working with xraid2 is interesting. So set things up with flex-raid raid6 and then just convert it intact to xraid2?

Yes

garyd9 wrote:
Oh, and on the 516, can a eSATA drive be used for backing up the array? Or can they only be used for expanding the array?

I believe you can however do note that some external enclosures may be incompatible.

garyd9 wrote:
For the raid scrubbing on a schedule issue: Can the raid scrubbing be initiated via a command line? If so, would it be feasible to just create a cron job to kick it on a schedule? That would probably suffice as a work-around for a validation check I've become accustomed to.

I think that should be possible. Of course you would want your cron job to check if it's appropriate to run it or not. Blindly running commands like this on a schedule could lead to problems.

garyd9 wrote:
@Mdgm, from the descriptions above and what I've seen in my PM box, it appears that I'd be able to use a newly purchased 516 box to at least get the data off a Radiator4 array in a pinch. Not as clean as a replacement pre-OS6 box (which would just take over the array natively), but at least doable. That's helpful.

Yes

garyd9 wrote:
@StephenB, I appreciate the suggestion to just wait and see what might happen with a new OS6 version, but I'm being pressured to come up with a plan to cycle out the BE's before the end of the year. (It doesn't help that my primary job is software development, so I'm really only able to work on this NAS stuff on my supposedly free time.)

Well if you do get new ReadyNAS units then you will benefit from firmware updates for those boxes such as 6.2. If your Pro BEs still work fine I would recommend keeping them for backup duties at least. With features such as disk spindown (on OS4 and coming in 6.2 for OS6) and the power off/on schedule they needn't draw too much power if you don't want them to.