ReadyNAS104 Pre-sales questions

1. Yes you can startout with one disk drive
2. Yes you can setup separate folders, either shared or private. For private folders you can use the private home shares feature
3. When we first released it 16TB volumes were the max supported. Provided you update to 6.4.0 (or later first) you can now have volumes larger than 16TB. So if you start off with one 6TB disk I would update to 6.4.0 (or later), verify the firmware update is successful, then do a factory default (wipes all data, settings, everything) since this is a new setup to get a clean setup on that firmware
4. It will do RAID-1 mirroring, yes. X-RAID won't do JBOD when you add the second disk. When the third drive is added using X-RAID you will have a 3 disk RAID-5 volume. If you want something different you can disable X-RAID under Volumes, destroy the existing volume - if it is already using the disk (NOTE destroying the volume DESTROYS your data, so backup your data first) and create the volumes you want.
5. The 104 can stream 1080p but what it can't do is transcode video of any resolution. If it can stream your video as is to your client then it will. Otherwise the video will fail to play.
6. You can share USB disks over your network. There are no expansion chasses for the 104. If you need more space than what will fit in the unit the best way forward would be to get another unit or replace your disks with higher capacity ones (if higher capacity disks are available)
7. Using X-RAID the disks you add should have at least the same capacity as existing disks. With X-RAID disabled you can create a volume on any disk you add.
8. Yes, you can use this to hold the Time Machine backups of your Macs. You can use the Global Time Machine feature or have dedicated Time Machine backup folders for each user.

Welcome to the Community!