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tweeks's avatar
tweeks
Aspirant
Dec 22, 2012

Where do I get additional drive trays? (forReadyNAS Ultra 2)

I have a ReadyNAS Ultra 2 [X-RAID2] w/RAIDiator 4.2.21 and I need at least two more drive trays.

I can't believe that no one sells extra drive trays. Any legit RAID system will have extra drive trays (aka "sleds") for sale so that customers han have a quick cold-sare on hand to quickly replace a bad drive.. In my case, I have a cold spare n hand, AND I use an off-site rotating copy (for backups in addition to my rsync).

But even with traditional, plain old RAID, if a drive goes bad.. you need to get a replacement drive in there FAST! If you don't, or have to fumble with screws out and back in.. you could drop your replacement drive.. or even worse.. if the drives are from the same batch.. they tend to fail aroumd the same time. Either way.. not very professional to have spare drives but no trays to keep them in at all times.

Where does one buy these drive trays? I couldn't find them on Amazon or anywhere!

Tweeks

9 Replies

  • mdgm-ntgr's avatar
    mdgm-ntgr
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    Apart from replacing a failed drive there really is no need for a spare drive tray. Even then it doesn't take long to remove four screws etc. whereas a resync will take hours. Unless you need to send the drive to someone who would struggle to do that and get them to install it, I don't really see the need for a spare drive tray.

    As for rotating backups off-site I hope you don't remove the drives from inside the ReadyNAS but rather use e.g. USB disks. Handling drives bare you risk damaging them through Electro Static Discharge without realising it. Not to mention the risk of damaging SATA connectors through repeated pulls. SATA connectors are only designed for a limited number of pulls.
  • mdgm wrote:
    Apart from replacing a failed drive there really is no need for a spare drive tray. Even then it doesn't take long to remove four screws etc. whereas a resync will take hours. Unless you need to send the drive to someone who would struggle to do that and get them to install it, I don't really see the need for a spare drive tray.
    Agreed. The only reasons I can see to buy one are to replace one that got damaged somehow, or get rid of the old-style trays that jam. But they are available.
  • mdgm-ntgr's avatar
    mdgm-ntgr
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    The Ultra 2 would have come with new style trays. It was released well after NetGear started shipping the new style drive trays.
  • StephenB wrote:
    Seems pretty available to me, these guys all claim to have it in stock... There are more, but the forum only allows 10 URLs per post.

    You are looking for a RNDTRAY-10000S btw.


    Ahhh.. that's the new tray that won't jam on me?

    Thanks! I didn't know that was it. (I just got my NAs in the mail.. so was trying to order them b4 actually laying hands on the thing.. and I aw no links anywhere.. just videos about problems with the sticky probs.

    Thanks!


    Tweeks
  • mdgm wrote:
    Apart from replacing a failed drive there really is no need for a spare drive tray. Even then it doesn't take long to remove four screws etc..


    That's rather ghetto. I work at a large Internet hoster.. and we had to replace screws on our RAID drives to swap one out.. we would stop using that vendor. Extra cold-stanby drives, ready in trays are a must. Especially if I'm thinking about going to a larger NAS head. When you start swapping out multiple drives (in the case of a volume size-grow), labeling the drives (externally) becomes a must. Doing so without multple trays is a show stopper (and inviting corruption).


    As for rotating backups off-site I hope you don't remove the drives from inside the ReadyNAS but rather use e.g. USB disks. Handling drives bare you risk damaging them through Electro Static Discharge without realising it. Not to mention the risk of damaging SATA connectors through repeated pulls. SATA connectors are only designed for a limited number of pulls.


    My plan WAS indeed to have offsite pulled-drive rotations. This is a valid form of off-site "snapshots"... and yes, I'm well equipped to handle ESD (static bags, aluminum foil wrapped drives, etc). Although I didn't know about the USB backup feature. That does seem more advantageous.. :)

    Any good pointers or articles on doing the USB backups? Does the integrated tool do it at the block level or is it rsync based?

    Tweeks
  • mdgm-ntgr's avatar
    mdgm-ntgr
    NETGEAR Employee Retired
    Fair enough. Just want to be clear that extra drive trays are used for the right reason.

    Swapping disks too regularly and damaging SATA connectors (in the NAS or on the disks) and the risk of ESD are important to be aware of. SATA connectors may be designed for say 50 pulls. Way more than enough for normal usage but if used regularly you could easily damage SATA connectors by over-using them.

    It uses cp to copy files onto USB backup disks. However you can use Rsync (share the USB disk via Rsync) and set it as the backup destination. Or share the source via Rsync and use that as the Remote Source.
  • I know it can be considered poor form to bump an old thread, but it is the correct thread, so: same question now, in 2014. Where can I get disk trays? All the links posted above are nonfunctional now. The product appears to be discontinued. :( Amazon shows 1 used available (only 1!), but I would like to get 2... and maybe a spare... thanks!
  • Since the new line uses a different tray, I'm not surprised most suppliers are running out. I've seen them listed on eBay once in a while. I bought 6 there for my Pro that had the old style, but that was a while back.

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