RND4000 NV+ v2

kturcotte wrote:
I have a couple of questions before I purchase the RND4000 NV+ v2. Basically, I'd like to use it as a media server. I'd want to put 4 3TB Western Digital hard drives into it. I'd like it to run in 2 different RAIDs (RAID1) so that I basically have 2 3TB hard drives, with 2 more as automatic mirrors. Is this possible?

Yes. During initial setup you would open RAIDar (http://www.readynas.com/downloads), click setup and choose Flex-RAID.

kturcotte wrote:
If I connect this over ethernet, will my computer (Windows 7) just see it as 2 separate drives that it can read/write, copy/cut/paste to?

It will see the NAS as a network drive. You can map shares on the NAS to a drive letter.\

kturcotte wrote:
Does it require any internal cables?

Simply use the supplied screws (4 per drive) and use a screwdriver to secure the drive to the drive tray and then slide the drive in.

kturcotte wrote:
Also, 2 of the drives are already in my computer and pretty much stuffed full. They're in sort of a manual RAID (I'm manually mirroring them myself with copy/paste), but everything isn't completely mirrored. Would I be able to copy everything I want to one of the drives, wipe the other drive, and then throw them into the NAS, and have it start copying?

Glad you asked this. The NAS will need to wipe all the disks you put in it.

kturcotte wrote:
Also, since I'm installing 12TBs, is that IT as far as expansion? I know it won't be able to take more hard drives, but will it be able to take larger hard drives in the future?

If you stuck to the default X-RAID2 (like RAID-5) you could later replace the disks one by one with higher capacity disks and get vertical expansion. You would need to replace two of the 3TB drives with higher capacity disks to get vertical expansion as expansion can only take place when redundant space can be added.

kturcotte wrote:
If not, would the RNDU6000-100NAS do everything I mentioned about? That would give me an additional 3TBs of storage.

Yes, the Ultra 6 is another good choice. I'd actually recommend using X-RAID2 dual-redundancy (like RAID-6) on that. If any two disks failed data would remain intact. This would give you 12TB of storage with 6x3TB disks before overheads etc.