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ReadyNAS 316 additional drives
I have two 3.0TB WD Red drives (WD30EFRX, September 2014) in my 6 bay RE316.
It's time to expand my data capacity, and I was hoping someone could advise on my best options.
Would I need to buy an...
Max_NAS wrote:
I have two 3.0TB WD Red drives (WD30EFRX, September 2014) in my 6 bay RE316.
It's time to expand my data capacity, and I was hoping someone could advise on my best options.
Would I need to buy another pair of the same drives to double capacity? Or can I install a single higher capacity drive?
The capacity rule for XRAID single redundancy is "sum the drives and subtract the largest". So in your case adding one additional 3 TB drive will double your capacity.
You could add a larger drive (say a 6 TB WD60EFRX), but you'd only be using 3 TB of it's capacity until you added a second one of that size. Some do plan ahead and do that - over the long haul, larger drives are often more cost effective. But you still have plenty of empty bays, and if your storage needs are growing slowly it might not be a good strategy for you.
You can't add a smaller drive though.
Not an easy question to answer, since it depends a lot on your specific use. It especially matters how much a volume failure would cost you (in time, lost data is you have no backup, etc.) vs. real cost for more new drives. Are you currently seeing any ATA errors, re-allocated sectors, or pending sectors? If you are, then replacement begins to look even better.
Keep in mind that at some time you're going to need to replace those three older drives. That means three re-sync operations, which are hard on drives. Failure of a second drive during re-sync and subsequent loss of the volume is more likely to occur with older drives.
Keep in mind you don't have to replace them all to get full use with bigger ones -- just two. Swapping two for 6TB ones also gives you an extra 3TB and swapping two for 8TBs gives you an additional 5TB. Then you can still replace the last one later for an additional 3 or 5TB. For me, 8TB drives is currently my minimum unless I'm recycling old ones. Anything smaller costs more per TB.
BTW, if you put them in alternating bays (1,3,5 or 2,4,6) they'll run a little cooler.
Thank you Sandshark and StephenB for your responses - it's reassuring to know this community is really helpful!
Quick summary of my RE316 use;
1. Mostly storage of old project files (CAD, 3d models, renderings, videos), each project in 10-30Gb zip files.
2. Archives of old cad software, photos, music, etc.
3. Also backup of C: drive.
4. Power on at 9am, off at 11pm every week day.
5. Incremental backups of current project files from PC to NAS using Acronis, every 3 hours.
6. Daily backups of C: drive
7. Occasional retrieval of old project files (ie. copying 30Gb zip files back to PC)
8. Never snapshots
9. Acronis creates one full backup version after every 10 incremental backups.
The disk test I ran last night returned "Disk test failed on disk in channel 4, model WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZNO, serial, etc.". This is the first time I've seen an error in the 10 years I've had this NAS, is it something to worry about?
Thanks for the info about staggering them into 2,4,6 - I didn't know that was possible.
Question now is - do I need to urgently replace the channel 4 disk, or should I add more disks or remove contents to get back down to say 50% total capacity and survive another few years?
Reducing the amount of data isn't going to help. The data ,is striped across all drives, it doesn't start filling one and go to the next, etc. If you have one failing drive and the others are the same or similar age, more failures are likely in your near future. Unfortunately, that could be when re-syncing a drive, which usually kills the volume.
Since you have a mix of archival files and backups, I hope you have at least a partial backup plan for anything that you can't tolerate losing. Make sure that backup is up to date before you start with any drive swaps. After backup, you should replace that drive before you consider adding another. And it sounds like replacement of all three is a good idea.
Max_NAS wrote:
The disk test I ran last night returned "Disk test failed on disk in channel 4, model WDC_WD30EFRX-68EUZNO, serial, etc.". This is the first time I've seen an error in the 10 years I've had this NAS, is it something to worry about?
Drives (like everything else) eventually fail. It is urgent that you do one or the other. If another disk fails, you will lose all your data.If you want to keep your data safe, you need a back up plan for the NAS.
You either need to replace the drive, or you need to back up all the files, and then do a factory default with the drives you want to use going forward. If you do the factory default, you'll need to set the NAS up again - recreating shares, etc. Then you'll need to restore the files from the backup.
The WD30EFPX is the current NAS-purposed drive of this size in WD's lineup. You could also replace it with a Seagate Ironwolf drive - the 3 TB model is ST3000VNZ06.
Since you need to expand anyway, you might get two that are bigger (6-8 TB). Then replace the failed drive, and after that resyncs replace one of the others with a new disk. 2x6TB+3TB would give you a 9 TB volume (3 TB bigger than you have now). 2x8TB + 3 TB would give you an 11 TB volume.
Thanks again to both of you.
This is what I have done and plan to do;
1. remove unnecessary files from the NAS so that capacity is now 50%, not 70%. This should give me sufficient capacity for a couple of years.
2. Connect a 5Tb external drive via USB, and set up a backup of all NAS volumes to the external drive.
So, if one or more of the NAS drives fail - I'll at least have the backup on external drive.
Sadly, I don't think replacing drives, factory defaults, etc. makes sense when the Netgear's NAS products are End Of Life and no longer supported. I'm devastated to discover this now after 10 years of rock solid performance, and only because I decided to do a disk test for the first time and dig deeper into the ReadyNAS ecosystem. Already the Firmware Check for Updates is returning errors, so it's a matter of time before my NAS becomes another redundant black box.
Nonetheless, thanks to you both for the support over the years.
Max
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