ReadyNAS NV+ v1 (Silver) and 3TB HDD

Well, I don't claim to understand how your setup worked. There's plenty of other posters who have tried to install 3 TB drives in their v1 NAS with no success at all. GPT formatting is required to fully use any drive > 2 TB - the addressing in the older MBR format doesn't have enough bits for anything more. The only way around that limit is to use multiple partitions on the drive for the data volume, which the NV+ doesn't do. And Netgear is very clear that GPT support isn't there. So this is a puzzle.

Do you remember what the NAS said your volume size was? Were you using flexraid (if so which mode) or xraid?

If I get around to it, I might try pulling the drives from my NV+ v1, and inserting a WDC 3 TB green drive, just to see what happens.

BTW please don't post in triplicate again. I'll delete the redundant posts, and keep this as the main thread.

MDS1968
If you managed to do this and you state "my ReadyNAS unit had no problems breaching the 2Tb barrier and ran without incident at close to full capacity for most of its life (in fact, until I sold it last week", then why, may I ask, are you only posting here about this now? You have encouraged others to post about their successes but you have not. That is also a puzzle.
StephenB has also introduced the question about the specifics missing from your post about unit setup, volume size.
I don't suppose you have a copy of logs from the unit for someone to examine.

The lack of support for 3 tb drives is not a "perceived" limitation; and the vast number of forum posts dealing with this issue are not misleading.

I think I recall one poster who had installed 3 TB drives. His system functioned, but he didn't really know volume size. I'm not sure when this was, and its a bit hard to search for it even if you use google. If I find it I'll post a link.

Here though is the expected result: https://www.readynas.com/forum/viewtopi ... 3&p=357503

Same drives, and ~746 GB with RAID-1, which would be a ~2 TB volume size with 4 drives installed in RAID-5. Not anywhere close to 9 TB.

StephenB wrote:
I think I recall one poster who had installed 3 TB drives. His system functioned, but he didn't really know volume size. I'm not sure when this was, and its a bit hard to search for it even if you use google. If I find it I'll post a link.

Found it! viewtopic.php?f=7&t=77990

The system functioned until a drive failed, and he apparently never looked at the capacity. It was pretty evident that he wasn't using the entire drive (since linux reader couldn't mount it).

Gentlemen,
I posted the hardware details to be helpful as I have only recently noticed that several users were having issues with 3Tb HDs. I was considering another capacity upgrade, but after looking at this forum a few weeks ago it appears that I have been lucky with my hardware configuration and 4/5Tb HDs are a non-starter, hence my decision to sell the unit.

I have already posted the precise details of the HDs including firmware (CC27) so you can easily test my configuration for yourself if you have doubts. I did not use any special or modified software/firmware, just that which was available on the Netgear website back in February.

The volume size was well over 8Tb. From memory, I believe the LCD display showed approximately 8.5 not 9, but ease off on the 'Spanish Inquisition' as I posted here to help others and do not profess to be an expert. In essence, the hardware worked, I was content and I had no reason to examine it further as I was not aware of any 3Tb issues back in February!

You will note from my earlier post that I had upgraded from 4 x 2Tb HDs and after a few more months I had almost reached full capacity on the upgraded unit. This limitation, combined with the slow access times pushed me to install a bank of 5TB drives in 2 x Icy Dock DataCage Classic MB455SPF-B in my Supermicro SC801 Server case and dispense with a discrete NAS system.

Hope this helps!

MDS

The reason for my concern is that your experience is not representative of what is likely to happen if other users do this.
If less experienced users try this they may:
1. Waste money on disks.
2. Create an unstable system
3. Risk data loss.

It may be interesting to experiment if this is done on a test system, but the current advice about the 2 tb limit should not change.

MDS1968 wrote:
but ease off on the 'Spanish Inquisition'

Starting off by saying we are misleading people is likely to provoke a reaction :shock: I don't think you meant it as an accusation, but it is easy to read your initial post that way.

MDS1968 wrote:
The volume size was well over 8Tb. From memory, I believe the LCD display showed approximately 8.5 not 9, but ease off on the 'Spanish Inquisition' as I posted here to help others and do not profess to be an expert. In essence, the hardware worked, I was content and I had no reason to examine it further as I was not aware of any 3Tb issues back in February!

If you look at the other two posts I linked, you'll see that their experiences were quite different from yours (and one was using the same disks). They were using Duo v1s, not NV+ v1, though technically that shouldn't have mattered and other folks have tried to insert 3 TB drives in NV+ v1 with no success. Many were very angry when it failed.

Your experience is very unusual to say the least, and no one here has ever heard of you before. I am puzzled by it because there is no technical explanation, and on its face, it sounds impossible - so I am also skeptical. But you sound sincere, are providing details, and you aren't attempting to explain it; you are instead inviting other people to try to duplicate your results.

You did provide hardware details, but that is not the full story. Confirming volume size and xraid/flexraid are very relevant followups. You answered one, but not the other (though if I were to guess you used the default xraid). Also the migration path is relevant. We don't know if you hot-inserted the new disks one by one and resynced, or if you did a fresh factory install with them all in place. It might matter.

vandermerwe wrote:
The reason for my concern is that your experience is not representative of what is likely to happen if other users do this.

Certainly that is the case. Though we do have people here who have modified their hardware in various ways, and pushed beyond Netgear limits. Some will certainly try the 8 TB seagate archival drive when it becomes available later this month. It will be a risk, Seagate makes no claims that the drive will work in a RAID array; and on top of that 8 TB drives in a ReadyNAS is new territory.

This is clearly experimental, based on forum experience the most likely outcome is failure, and even if somehow it works it might have issues - would a raid repair succeed??? who knows?

At this point it certainly is not for normal users, it is for hobbyists who might be inclined to play around. It would be a very bad idea to try this without full backups (or blank disks).

Though if people understand all that, there is no harm in trying the experiment. It won't brick the NAS, and it won't brick the disks either.