Readynas 516 maintenance.

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agmunari wrote:

I would like to understand if it is worth updating it to the latest version, and the possible risks. 

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I've been running 6.10.9 on my RN526 with no issues.  6.10.10 removes ReadyCloud (which is a plus), but it also removes the ability to install any apps from the web ui.  If you have apps installed now (or any plans to install them later), then I recommend stopping with 6.10.9.  If you only use the NAS for storage, then it's reasonable to run 6.10.10.

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agmunari wrote:

Also I would like to know what maintenance operation is recommended - Defrag, Scrub, Balancing. 

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Netgear makes no recommendations.  Personally I run one of the four maintenance operations every month (cycling through all of them 3x a year).  The scrub accesses every sector of every disk, so it serves as a second disk test.  So I do put one month between the scrub and the disk test.  Something like

1. disk test (jan, may,sep)
2. defrag (feb,june,oct)
3. scrub (mar,july,nov)
4. balance (apr,aug,dec)

If your NAS is on a power schedule, it will power down even if a balance, disk test, or defrag is running.  I've modified one of the scripts in the shutdown sequence to prevent that.

The scrub and disk test both can give early warning of disk issues, so it is worth running them periodically (and looking at the smart history of your disks).  I wouldn't run them too often, as they do put a significant work load on the disks.   

The balance will reclaim free space - and it might take a long time the first time you run it.   If you run it regularly, it shouldn't take more than a few minutes.

The defrag is IMO the least useful of these functions.  There is a downside if you have a lot of snapshots - defragging a file in a share will increase the overall disk space used by the snapshots in that share.  But the impact is small on my own system, so I do run it anyway.