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What is the maximum size for an external USB hard drive for backing up the RNDP6310?
What is the maximum size for an external USB hard drive...for backing up the ReadyNAS RNDP6310 by connecting to the front backup USB port? Thank you
nowthennet wrote:
What is this SMR business? What does that mean?
SMR: shingled magnetic recording.
http://www.tomsitpro.com/articles/seagate-8tb-archive-hdd-review,2-822.html wrote:
SMR, in its simplest terms, is a method of overlaying data tracks, much like shingles on a roof, to increase data storage density. One of the greatest aspects of SMR technology is its low cost per gigabyte; the Seagate model we have under the microscope retails for 3 cents-per-GB. However, SMR comes with inherent performance constraints, and some implementations have limited compatibility with existing systemsNormal drives shipping today are "PMR" - perpendicular magnetic recording.
With SMR technology, the storage is increased by overlapping the data tracks on the disk. This is cost-effective (which is why these drives are cheaper than PMR 8 TB drives). The downside is that when you write to a track, the next track is trashed because of the overlap. In order to maintain data integrity, the drive has to "ripple" the write until it reaches an unused track (or the end of the drive).
For instance, if you write to track 100, the disk firmware actually needs to do this:
read 101, write 100
read 102, write 101,
read 103, write 102
...
The drive firmware does this in the background automatically with a large cache, but this will greatly slow down write speed if you are doing a lot of sustained writes. And there still been compatibility issues. The linux community has patched drivers, and Netgear made some of their own modifications to the OS 6 firmware.
None of these are available on your older Pro-6.
nowthennet wrote:
Where can I find instructions for updating the BIOS and upgrading to 0S6?
Both are in this forum. OS6 isn't supported on the older NAS by Netgear, although they have fixed some bugs that are specific to older NAS anyway. The upgrade is destructive, so you will need to back up your data somewhere.
The bios upgrade is here: http://www.readynas.com/download/addons/x86/4.2/BIOS_Update_Package_0.5-x86.bin You install it like an add-on.
I bought this drive:
SEAGATE Backup Plus External Hard Drive - 8 TB
It came fortmatted as NTFS. I left it as that because I have found that I cannot successfully backup to my smaller 750GB drives if they are formatted to ext3 or fat32. I don't know why that is.
Anyway, my backup currently works fine when I connect my 750GB drives to the front backup USB port. However, when I connect the new 8TB drive, although it shows up on the ReadyNAS Frontview as an 8TB drive it simply does not seem to perform properly. The data that I am backing up from the ReadyNAS is approx 350GB. It manages to back that up no problem on the 750GB USB drives (apart from some complaints about maintaining permissions and some file names and path names that are too long) but when I connect the 8TB drive it takes 24 hours to back up about 30GB of data (approx). It seems to have no prospect of completing the back up.
Is this because the hard drive is too big? What would people expect to happen if the hard drive were too big?
Which firmware are you running?
Also if you download the logs what is the date in bios_ver.log ?
Firmware: Radiator 4.2.28
bios_ver.log: 10/03/2008 FLAME6-MB V1.6
There is a newer bios available - but perhaps wait for mdgm to respond as to whether installing it is a useful step.
nowthennet wrote:
it takes 24 hours to back up about 30GB of data (approx). It seems to have no prospect of completing the back up.
The Pro NTFS write speed is about 17 MB/sec with a traditional PMR USB drive. That should give about 1.4 TB/day overall.
The Backup Plus is an SMR drive, so sustained write speeds will be variable (and slower than the normal PMR drives). But you should still be seeing TB/day not GB/day.
Maybe while you are waiting for mgdm to look at the logs, you might try benchmarking the drive speed on a PC (preferrably using a USB 2.0 port). The drive has a large internal write cache, so you need to test with a lot of data (preferrably ~100 GB).
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